Sep 14·edited Sep 14Liked by Heather Cox Richardson
- Pulled Quotes -
''Haitian immigrants, who were welcomed to Springfield by officials eager to revitalize the city and who are there legally, say they are afraid.'' Their fear and any harm are on the hands of Donald Trump .
So where is law enforcement? Since when can Nazis disrupt city council meetings and call in bomb threats? Wake up Merrick Garland. Imprison them. Take their stuff away.
Most law enforcement officers, nationwide, are Trump supporters. Their unions have made that clear, not to mention the sheriffs, who are, generally speaking, even worse than city police forces.
If that includes the department of Justice and the FBI, then some asses need to be booted out. Assemble a team of certifiably non-bigoted FBI agents and head on over. Not all military people and law enforcement officers are bigoted.
Edit: I served on active duty in the military for 13 years one month and 24 days (not that I was counting). I know what I stated above to be true.
Beverly Gage's recent prize-winning biography of J. Edgar Hoover, "G-Man," documents that he was a racist, a member of a KKK-aligned college fraternity, and that from the beginning, and for much of his tenure, agents were not only recruited from that fraternity, but that membership was a de facto requirement for the job!
Hoover’s been dead for 52 years. No organization will be completely free of maggots, but with periodic disinfectant they can be held to a minimum. As they should be. As any organization with integrity should demand that they be.
That is what I wrote to my governor before Biden was elected, that he should be focusing on clearing the state law enforcement of White Supremacists. I do not think he got the message in one way until after January 6. By then it was too late.
William, please get rid of the dehumanizing “maggots”; call them MAGA supporters. Most of us here are speaking out against 45’s and JD’s dehumanizing of the legal immigrants in Springfield; we need to resist using their methods.
Jim, one would hope that since Hoover has been dead nearly a half-century, things would have changed. I am thinking the Black Lives Matter Movement had it right in needing our police forces to be reworked into something that is less violent, more involved in actual service, and fewer supremacists of any kind. Now, how do we get that going? None of those guys want to give up the power they think they so richly deserve. They now have powerful fraternal unions that are really training grounds, it seems for the bad behavior, protecting the bad apples as though that is the way to keep law and order. There are other countries that do it better. Maybe we need to follow some of their guidelines as to hiring, training, removing those who don't have the ability to do the job right, etc. When a community does not know if it can depend on its police it is not a safe community.
I just finished my song yesterday, “They’re Eating Cats and Dogs Says JD Vance.” I was just now going to record it on my phone and put it on my YouTube channel but I prefer to perform it at a local music festival in Connecticut and get the pro recording up on my channel. But here are the words for now:
In Springfield they’re eating dogs
And now they’re eating cats
What can a childless Catman do
With those awful facts
Maybe move to Katmandu
Or flee in a catamaran
Or just move to Katmandu
With my girl and dogs and cats
He broke down the doorways
Of the Capital
They followed his directives
So Tyrannical
In Springfield they’re eating dogs
And now they’re eating cats
What can a childless do
With those awful facts
(Signed: Catman Bill — my YouTube channel name and stage name. Unfortunately this platform doesn’t recognize rhymes of verse and I need to double space them
I agree with Helen - none of us need nor want more verses, songs or memes about what is being done to immigrants whether in Ohio or elsewhere. Someone will pick it up & spread it even more, which is the current way of life right now.
The only lines of your song that will go viral will be quoted out of context and for the wrong side. They will be taken as truth or facts rather than in the context of a satirical song: “In Springfield they’re eating dogs/ And now they’re eating cats …”
Then we should simply close everything down and put tape on our mouths like the Sisters of Mercy did to me in grade school before expelling me. Are you getting ready to expel me again? I’ll answer: YES.
William, checking in from local law enforcement as a liberal. I can't speak for the FBI, but the three local agencies with which I am familiar (2 city PDs and one county SO), the more liberal city has the more liberal police force. The conservative city and the county are less liberal, but there's a good percentage of liberal LEOs in both those jurisdictions.
We live in a social system. A change to that system is not necessarily an improvement. A reactive change is almost certainly not an improvement. Anyone who thinks it’s okay for someone to tamper with a system they don’t understand, please pick a system that won’t harm me when it stops working, as it will.
To improve a system, start by understanding how the system is supposed to work, and then understand why the system isn’t working that way. That’s a lot harder in the short term, but a lot easier in the long term.
Or go ahead and tamper with the system, and that will make it a whole lot easier in the short term, and a whole lot harder in the long term.
We do need to change law enforcement. Perhaps the current incarnation isn't hurting you, I imagine a cis white guy, but people of color, women and LGBTQ people are hurt everyday. There are other people who are important, not just you and your kind.
There is no "us" and "them," there is only "us." As MLK put it, "We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly." That doesn't mean that unnecessary suffering is equally distributed. Nor does it mean that the responsibility to end unnecessary suffering is equally distributed. It means that unnecessary suffering is unnecessary, and from everyone who is given more, more will be demanded.
Now we are cis white guys. Holy crap. And everyone is hurt every day. Hello. No they are not. Sorry I don’t buy into it. That’s what is creating the MAGA movement and you just don’t understand it.
James, we’ve been working to change the system of regarding people who are different as less than human for generations. Psychologists have advanced theories as to why it’s so easy for humans to set up clans and “other” those who don’t belong. Speaking out about this injustice is reactive by its very nature, just like pulling a toddler’s hand away from a hot pan is reactive. I believe that being reactive is justified in both cases, because we have seen generations of harm done by dehumanizing groups of people.
Interestingly, far too often the script runs: be discriminated against (Irish, Germans, Italians, etc.), assimilate, and then choose to discriminate against another group that is relatively powerless. (It helps if the group has physical characteristics that make members easily identifiable at a distance.)
“Leaders” get power over MAGAs (and other assimilated groups) by convincing them that the powerless group seeks to take their inherent power away (vote illegally, kill their pets) from them. The wealthy “leaders” hide the larger power grab by those who got their wealth (and continue to get a lot of more wealth) by working the system (refusing to pay contractors, lobbying officials to ignore laws or rewrite them).
You're right. You have to be reactive. But know when to be reactive and when to deliberate. A doctor who knows when to be reactive and when to be deliberate will react to stabilize the patient, and then deliberate by taking the time necessary to understand the cause of the patient's symptoms. That's true even when the "patient" is America.
Equating "America" with its racist right wing religious extremist element - as represented by the Republican party - is a generalization which elides and defames the majority of Americans who repudiate MAGA and all it stands for.
Yeah.., "one nation indivisible" worked for me. What can be stronger? A "christian nation".. "under god"., A god? Err ahh, WHAT kind of god? Sun god? Maybe go ask one of those preachers with two Gulfstream jet airplanes, bought by his/her flocks, who speaks with "god" at 35,000 feet. Huh? GMAB!
Let's face it.., we are dealing with human behavior. Yes, Human, behavior, learned or otherwise. Not so different from 'animal instinct' when subjected to repeated abuse. Experiencing kindness , not so much.
Absolutely - read Jessica Pishko's new book "The Highest Law in the Land" about the unchecked poer of sheriffs and how that threatens our democracy. An eye opener for me!
Rex, you may be on the "left coast" but, your opinion sure isn't somewhere out there in 'left-field'..., IMHO. And, I'm afraid that if a national poll were accurately taken, it would probably support your unfortunate observation. We could go into the reason(s)why, but for right now I think we're surrounded. Springfield, Kent State, Waco, Charleston. We're "on our own" only if we stay quiet about this. So, start by putting a Harris Waltz sign up.
And it is a chain of personnel affected by movements such as dominionism in our own ranks. We all know that military service frequently leads to law enforcement officers. And I'm sorry but the dominionism movement is very prevalent in our military today.
Seriously. Be very careful who you elect as sheriff. Most people don’t realize how much entrenched power these folks have dating back decades if not more than a century. They are the law in many states and yes, many have sold their souls to the cult of MAGA.
I think we could be looking for some changes in that regard if for no other reason than people are leaving the party and who are in political positions so may have figured out commonsensically that laws must be upheld. Their own jobs could be on the line at the police level. But I think we're still in for a long rehab in at least 21 states. So the local action is really really important. I love that Kamala has been educating herself at the higher levels and can work with Biden's many many successful plans already in the works. We do have to stop being in conflict all the time, because there are quite a lot of people who have never yet understood how a democracy really works. And who have learned only how to whine and complain as a default position.
Our son is a sheriff's deputy. He won't vote for 45. But he will vote for a third party. He thinks he's sending a message to both parties by doing so. He won't listen to us or his brother when we ask him to vote to protect his nieces future.
My son feels disrespected by the media and the public because the "Liberals" agenda has turned us against law enforcement. The real problem lies with the law enforcement officers who have committed atrocities. Sadly, we've had too many examples in Colorado alone. Elijah McClain, a small, 23 year old, black man, with autism, did nothing wrong, he just looked weird because he wore a ski mask in August. So a concerned individual called and reported him to the police. The police response was totally inappropriate and brutal. An innocent person, who was just on his way home from shopping at a convenience store, died three days later from injuries and treatment by the police officers and the paramedics.
Sadly, the good things law enforcement does rarely makes the News. We don't have statistics on how many lives are saved by law enforcement officers, etc.
Rex Page, you're right. Many law enforcement officers lean right. Some are right wing extremists. This goes back a long way. Have you read the book Prequel by Rachel Maddow?
It is not easy reading but it explains some of the history of what we are experiencing currently.
TC - apply a little logic. The guys in WWII were acting within the law.
That's OK.
If the government passes a law saying "people who act like Nazis can be shot" that's OK.
However, someone has to lay down a definition of what "Acting like a Nazi" is. And who exactly has the right to shoot them.
And that starts a precedent, because the NEXT government would then be entitled to initiate a law that says "people who act like Liberals can be shot."
No, of course not, TC. I was just reacting to violence as a first response to violence. In war, it's essential, but maybe not yet in Springfield OH. How about arresting them and force-feeding them dead pets?
Worst posting of comments I’ve ever read here. What is WRONG with you all, making bad jokes about a HORROR like McConnell TAKING OVER OUR legislature??? THAT was Heather’s point. You all that wrote ditties and attacked ALL police just missed her ENTIRE POINT. I am vastly disturbed by so many of you this morning. But I’m MORE disturbed by Trump, Vance, and the direction the Republican Party continues to operate. We will self-destruct if the majority of Americans do NOT wake up to the very real danger of just about the entire Republican Party - and WHO they choose to lead it.
Thank you. Well said. I always read Heather’s posts with a mix of horror and fascination having lived long enough to see the patterns being woven thanks to hindsight. But the adage still holds that those who are ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it.
The thread fails to realize how truly Nazi the Republican strategies are become.
The inventions of Vance about the Haitians eating pets reeks of the terrible rumors the Nazi’s used to deprecate and then victimize the Jewish populations of East Europe. Establishing any human group with depraved eating and ritual sets them aside from humanity.
Then Mitch McConnell and the party strategies to weaponize the courts for Political results was the very fulcrum by which the Nazi’s used existing legal apparatus to make Hitler Dictator.
We are not to distant from the very steps of 1933- 1935 to assume control of the Weimar Constitutional Government by determined extremism.
Frankly, since the ACLU defended their right to march in Skokie Illinois, depriving the rights of the Jewish residents of Skokie to basic safety. And although that particular march was canceled, the precedent thus set laid the foundation for things like Charlottesville's Unite the Right rally and Nazis disrupting city council meetings. And is why the ACLU will never ever see so much as a brass farthing from me.
That's like saying that you won't vote for Kamala because you don't like her policy on immigration. The ACLU has done more good than you obviously choose to know.
We support the ACLU bigly and have for years. They do great work. By the way regardless of what people are marching about, in this country we still have the right to march thankfully. That is basic in this country.
Isn't that precious? So which kinds of extremists who want me dead would I have to worry about them using my money to defend if I did donate? No, don't answer that.
The bitter pill of free speech and freedom to assemble is that they apply to everyone. My mom lived in Skokie for many years, and my dad fought in WWII. We were horrified by the march you cite. We don't like anything the Nazis, neo or otherwise, stand for, and we also don't tolerate censorship. That is one of the authoritarian tools that gave the Nazis so much power in the first place. The ACLU didn't set the precedent, the constitution did.
The right is to peaceable assembly, which I think is impossible when the purpose of your assembly is to advocate for the violent destruction of whole swathes of society on the basis of their race, religion, or class. The purpose of such assemblies are not protest nor petition, but intimidation, and I do not believe the first amendment guarantees a right to intimidate.
To me, there is a difference between phoning in bomb threats, which is illegal but hard to prosecute, and shutting down speech, no matter how repugnant.
I think the fact that law enforcement didn't drag the Nazis from the city council meeting shows a divided Springfield.... unfortunately. Racism runs deep in America. I think Ohio, in the early 1900s was the heart of the KKK.
Also, someone speaking on behalf of the Haitians should sue Vance. As we have seen, hitting the likes of Trump in the wallet does get results if only the assurance that circumspection is a virtue.
The neo-Nazis, repellent as they are, still have the right to speak. I have not heard that they were unduly disruptive in Springfield. Hatefulness is protected by the First Amendment.
But doesn’t hate speech by its very nature incite violence? Aren’t shady Vance and the convicted felon adjudicated rapist, in fact, in citing violence by what they are saying about Haitian immigrants? Just because this is the law at the moment, doesn’t mean the law is right, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t examine this, and perhaps change it in today’s atmosphere…
incite- not insight. That said, there is a line that I presume has to be adjudicated between inciting violence and hate speech. But it should be clear. Trump incited violence imo. This should be before the law in Jack Smith's case.
I think the UK has stronger laws about this. Hate speech is too broad a term and vulnerable to interpretation. Inciting violence gets closer. Trump uses hate speech all the time. He comes right up to the line and even crosses it into incitement I believe.
I think the tricky part of incitement that lets Chump escape is that if one doesn't explicitly call for violence, listeners who interpreted remarks as calls to action are liable, but the speaker isn't. I think.
Actually, it isn’t. Even Freedom of Speech has limits. There’s the famous example of yelling ‘fire’ in a crowded theater, there are laws against libel and slander, there are laws against hate speech and incitement
In the early days of the labor movement, some folks who were on strike were holding a Christmas party, and an unknown person snuck in and yelled 'fire!' There was a panic, and quite a few people died.
In Oregon, there is a statute that reads with the language of "by word or conduct, one person places another in fear of injury, serious injury, or death". It is elevated by classification when that language is based upon the "perception of the actor's belief that the person is of a particular race, gender, religion, or sexual orientation". I know we've got a state statute on riot that prohibits 5 or more people engaging in "violent or tumultuous conduct"
Yes, this should be applied to Vance and Trump. They know exactly what they’re doing. Trump desperately needs to bring to life his lies about the country being an awful place, filled with violence and going downhill. His minions are helping him with their incursions into peaceful society. Elon Musk is amplifying them with his millions of bots because he’s being promised a role in our government. He ignores that he’s here illegally. He invalidated his visa and somehow, okay bought his way, into our government and get billions of our tax dollars while working to destroy our democracy.
I believe other states have similar laws/statutes, but there isn't any such federal law. I'm not sure that there's no fed law, but I think that's the case.
Agree! What is most important, in my view, is that the "law" is enforced in a "CIVIL" manner. If the result of what ever is taking place is imminent damage (other than meeting disruption, etc), itmust be handled civilly. Time, not being of the essence. Take photos, record it, bring those responsible to court. Again, de-escalate things. Bring it to court. Our police are sometimes too aggressive because they may have been 'burned' too many times for trying to be polite. Still, using force that is unnecessary, is not civil. We need civility here in this great nation if we want to remain.
There were bomb threats called into elementary and middle schools. Children had to be evacuated and classes moved. You don't consider that "unduly disruptive?"
I think we need to revisit the first amendment. I don’t see why speech directly contradictory to the founding ideals of our country should be allowed. Deport these people!
Odious as White Christian Nationalism (Nazi-ism) is, aren't all entitled to their beliefs and free expression? If the 1st were to be amended, who would decide what can or cannot be said? Whomever it would be is likely to have their own biases, and there we are back in some sort of authoritarianism, and it doesn't matter if it's rightist or leftist. Eventually it will shift to the other position, and someone(s) will always be unhappy.
I agree with you William. But Trump is telling the country that he will imprison democrats who are trying to bring his mob to justice, creating in the minds of his faithful followers an equivalence that doesn’t exist because we are not committing crimes. They are. These false rumors, which are stated as though they are true by Trump, Vance, Loomer and the rest of them, endangering the innocent Haitians and democrats in general is a real and very powerful form of terrorism. They must be stopped. They ought to be arrested and charged with attempted murder along with seriously disrupting people’s lives. Disturbing the peace of our country — of our countrymen. Isn’t that what it is? Trump said himself that dems caused his attempted assassination. But we are only reporting what he has in fact done. He is telling his people we stole the 2020 election! And many, many other complete falsehoods. Trump rapes women then says the immigrants are raping our women!
Very well said Susan. I was a moderate Republican from the first primary I voted in which was for Ronald Reagan in 1981. I hate to admit I voted for Trump in 2016. But I voted Democrat full ticket in the 2020 presidential election. I got banned from Newsbreak for my retort to a Trumpster who called me a number of foul things for being a Biden supporter automatically because I was against Trump. I actually don't approve of everything President Biden has done (policy on Israel being a big one) but holy cow he is by far the lesser of the two evils and yes I'm voting for Harris. I hope I'm wrong, but I think the Orange Chump is going to win and if he does the US is doomed.
The onus there is on local law enforcement to begin any investigation. These terrorists aren't stupid, and, until some evidence is produced that they've violated federal law, the DoJ could only get involved at the request of the local police department or, maybe, the Governor who is, possibly coincidentally, a Republican. It's unlikely that Garland would do anything anyway, he seems completely disengaged from any of the political activity taking place.
There was a recent New Yorker article on the FBI and what they do (and don’t do) about dealing with these groups. Interesting that there are some left wing folks doing some of the footwork here.
In deed. Where has law enforcement been for several decades while the republicans have been able to be engaged in voter suppression, which has been going on since Reconstruction, threatening poll workers including federal and state officials with harm to them and their families for carrying out their patriotic duties to insure honest and fair elections. Let us not forget when more than forty years ago a group of wealthy, ultra conservative, white supremest realized that if something wasn’t done and Democracy was permitted to follow it’s natural course that they would no longer be in the majority and that they would no longer hold sway over the minority and that they could not let that happen. So all these decades later we find ourselves as a nation under the threat of losing everything and becoming an autocracy. A lot of the blame can be given to what’s suppose to be the loyal opposition, the Democrats for not challenging effectively over the years the threat our freedom.
One of the casters on the Meidas Touch Network posted a video of Florida cops mistreating a Miami Dolphin they'd pulled over for speeding. Also his team mates who came to help him. They were just outside the football stadium on their way to play a game. The poster's point was that if these guys weren't famous, monied, and lawyered up, there wouldn't have been any fair remedy for them. As it was, one of the cops (I think the one who kicked the baller when he was handcuffed and on the ground) got put on admin duty. But there were many cops there who stood by or assisted in the assault who haven't been reprimanded or punished... yet. We shall see.
Trump is the monkey that serves as the mouthpiece for Project 2025 and the misogynistic overturn of Roe vs Wade. It’s insulting to our democracy. Boycott the Republican National Party - up and down the ballot, until they come to the table with a reputable party that doesn’t make America look like a joke.
This is small, but a start. In TN an experienced repub state senator lost his primary. He was outraged. He claimed it was due to Dems voting repub in the primary and asked the repubs to investigate. Meantime, reporters went to his district and talked to voters. Voters said he’d been told people opposed school vouchers and was instructed to vote against them. He didn’t. So by a large margin they declined to “investigate” and his loss stood. This needs to happen EVERYWHERE.
(This is a PET project of our gov, who lost last year but intends to try again; this appears to be the hill he wants to stake his political career upon.)
And in Texas....the governor refuses to accept the will if the people. Vetoing legislation that funds public schools and doesn't give him the vouchers he wants. When I was young and naive, thinking our elected officials were supposed to represent us, Senator Cornyn's response to my letter expressing my disagreement with one of his Congressional votes was that he knew better than me, what was needed for our State and Country. That's when I realized that certain politicians don't care what their constituents think or want
I'm not sure it is only Republicans....it seems that way...but in Texas we have a couple of Democrats that are against reproductive rights or LGBTQ rights.
Just an additional FYI - in Tennessee, we have open primaries. The TN General Assembly passed a law that requires a sign be put up at the polling places that to vote in a primary, you have to be a “bona fide” member of the party, which absolutely no explanation as to what “bona fide” is supposed to mean, and flying in the face of the open primaries we have. As far as I can see, the signs mean absolutely nothing except voted intimidation. When I just voted in the most recent primary elections, I walked right past the sign and up to the poll worker, who asked which ballot I wanted. I was not requested to show anything to make sure I was “bona fide” anything.
So, if Democrats voted in the GOP primary, against the state senator mentioned above, it was 100% legal.
Marsha Blackburn refuses to debate her. Right up there with refusing to have a town hall for years. She is odious.
We are primarily screwed up because we got gerrymandered and voter suppressed to smithereens after 2010, thanks to the red wave that year, and Project Red Map.
I also saw a video summary of an article from the NYT recently, that pointed out that there are about half a million Tennesseans who had felonies in the past that still cannot vote, because of the maze of rules and beaurocracy for getting voting rights reinstated. A very small percentage get their voting rights back.
Amen ! I try to stay up on the factual news but it is so grim I worry about my own health.
I wrote yesterday that we as Americans can only hold our heads high if and when we actually have solid laws that protect us all. Not partisan law. Reading Heather today so boiled my blood. How can we have let so many ugly humans control our very existence ?
I know this ramble doesn’t do one thing except get it off my chest. I apologize to all who have workable solutions. We need you!!👏🏻🙏🏻🎶
I feel your frustration and so my mantra and efforts have been focused on the solution at this moment is to VOTE BLUE UPAND DOWN THE TICKET, to make it difficult for any challenges to the result and then focus on moving forward to change these processes that have been slowly pushed down our throat to all a minority to rule over the majority. The movement of change started with the election of Biden and slipped a little with the midterms that gave power to the do nothing extreme Repubs except spew lies. So the lesson is to change that balance and make the moves to correct laws that the majority simply don’t agree with, Roe v Wade, presidential immunity, citizen’s united etc. Stay focused and when you can promote why voting blue is to their benefit to stop this slope into autocracy or fascist rule. The world does not need any more Hitlers anywhere, but most definitely not in o e of the most powerful and richest nations in the world, the USA. There really is no other choice, VOTE BLUE UP AND DOWN THE TICKET.
The MAGA hypocrisy knows no bounds when " MAGA Republicans have spread the lie that Haitian immigrants there have been eating white people's pets," is compared with the actual truth that a white US governor shot her puppy to death....
The whole situation is appalling. I wondered how people as erudite as Albert Speer could be Nazis. Thank you Senator Vance-on-fire for showing us how . . . a**hole. The nakedness of this man's ambition is not only distasteful but emblematic of exhausted Reaganism.
Yes wonder is in order for the rank obscenities that especially Trump in the latest iteration has given people's darker natures a path for if you can call it a path. SHAME on the crippled corporate media. Shame. Let's start listening to the psychologists who have been quietly and even professionally been engaging with their own ethics of Duty To Warn, despite the machinations of the American Psychological Association in refusing to give up the Goldwater Rule. There is an obvious emotional sickness, a harmful psychological deficit, which informs a moral deficit in the case of what the Republican Party has promoted and allowed. And I really do wonder at the enormous excess that it takes to jar some of the Republicans out of their privileged complacency or whatever you want to call it, perhaps half baked morality would do it? Whatever you want to call it their actions are completely disgusting and not worthy of a supposedly grown adult in any democracy anywhere. Let's curb the trauma producers by voting them out everywhere all the way up and down, and then we can do the real work, as many of us are already doing, of honoring the good work already done for the greatest number of people, where everybody gets a voice who is trained to use it by a much better educational system and participation in the life of the community in good ways. The freedom of the speech that we are hearing is not freeing, being only confrontational and harmful, in fact not even at all truthful. At all. Media do your GD work! Psych Health classes mandatory for liars?
What I found most useful for getting anyone, especially bumper sticker message spouting Trump supporters, to become a little more thoughtful was a sign and business card handout that had a graphic of the Statue of Liberty (more properly, "Liberty Enlightening the World"), that started with:
-Who You Voted For
-is not as important as
-What You Stand For
Simply asking them about what they stood for, with a little more background, calmed them down and we actually found some useful things to discus further.
The business card pointed out a few non-partisan sites they could go to listing a lot more information about all candidates biographies, votes, positions, ratings, speeches, and funding sources.
Votesmart has made a free tiny example of the facts they have on thousands of candidates (most elected officials), key vote descriptions, their votes, campaign contributions, etc, at https://static.votesmart.org/static/pdf/2022_VSDM.pdf
I opted for a Kindle version for the new Kindle Scribe I bought so I can use the very long battery life while out in places like Wolfs Neck Woods State Park where I can't hike the distances (or speed) my wife likes so much. It also helps overcome the gaps in cell phone coverage if people are interested but can't check it out on their phones.
Personality disorders are not mental illnesses. It’s who they are. Free speech does not allow inciting violence. Haters always split that hair. Liars and bullies need consequences. We are the ones who need Health Classes, while they need Alcatraz (or equivalent).
Very well stated, J.D. Thank you. The assignment of personal responsibility for what one views as another's repugnant, even violent, behavior is especially important. Murderous dictators like Putin are simply evil; they are sickening, not sick.
When I worked at public school, years ago, a psychologist told me that personality disorders are usually set very young and usually not responsive to standard psychological treatment models. Perhaps inpatient if people know what they are doing. But it’s usually the behaviors, which are always problematic, that need to be addressed. I didn’t really believe it at the time, but I do now.
Mental illness can be treated with success. Critical to know the difference. Malignant narcissism can be attractive up to a point. And beyond dangerous if never challenged. What more proof do we need.
Our ability to prove has been purposely compromised by the righteous right as a way of deferring self-responsibility by layering the lies so deeply that they become a new kind of truth that can't be addressed by facts at all. I wish Dems would get deeper into that which actually Kamala has - we couldn't find a more prepared person I'm so happy to say. Even no matter what happens in November. I've been wondering for some years now if anybody is researching the childhoods of individual righteous perps other than Mary’s revealings of her family. And the huge question you outline is how do you educate the parents of those school kids and by also bypassing somehow the angry mob that doesn't want to be held responsible. I am beyond glad that one of my daughters put me on a path of emotional intelligence years ago, considering my own early challenges with which I have been dealing for more than 20 years from a professional and way longer than that. These discussions are so great for implanting endangered sanity.
Are we completely helpless before the upcoming election? We currently control the Senate and the Presidency. What can we do besides wring our hands, to clear out the problems in Springfield and Bar Harbor and any other places (Florida and Texas come to mind) while we still have power in at least some areas of government? Stop yelling at Trump about it, and put the power of the government into squelching these sorts of take overs of our country. It is the job of the Federal government (send in troops, Mr. President) to put down these anti-American activities, if need be. Stop the illegal activity by FL governor DeSantis to spend state money to lobby against two amendments on the ballot and to enter people ‘s homes to scare citizens into not voting!
Why isn’t the President throwing his full power into these things? He and Garland and the senate are sitting on the sidelines instead of pulling rank and using the power they have to clean up the country! We know, “Republicans” are planning to use that power as soon as they get the keys to the castle!
That question of seeming inaction perplexes me, too. There may be constitutional or legal constraints designed to protect the rule-of-law. I do not really know.
Perhaps the President and the Attorney General perceive the society close to a civil war and they find themselves sitting on top of a proverbial volcano, trying not to tip it into an eruption through decisive actions provoking lawless responses.
Then, maybe, the republican experiment is finished.
The only thing I do know for sure is that I need to get off my slothful and depressed hiney, volunteer, and vote.
Great comment, Robin. I will briefly respond to some points that zapped me between the eyes.
1. "SHAME on the crippled corporate media. Shame." In the click-bait culture, it is easier to titillate than to do the hard-work required to repudiate.
2. "Let's start listening to the psychologists who have been quietly and even professionally been engaging with their own ethics of Duty To Warn, despite the machinations of the American Psychological Association in refusing to give up the Goldwater Rule." If you are not familiar with Dr Bandy X. Lee (M.D., M.Div.), you may find the actions she is trying to lead to be heartening. Dr Lee is leading the charge for just what you advocate; she has paid a price for her courage. At first (i.e., six years ago) her proposed intervention for the mental health crisis precipitated by then President, now candidate Trump, struck me as arrogant. These days, however, Dr Lee's leadership may be one of our final opportunities to avert the death of the republic. Of course, I have a crush on the teacher, so I am biassed. Here is Dr Lee's incisive take on the 10sep24 debate between Vice President Harris and candidate Trump. https://bandyxlee.substack.com/p/a-beautiful-debate
3. "Whatever you want to call it ... [the Republicans'] ... actions are completely disgusting and not worthy of a supposedly grown adult in any democracy anywhere. Let's curb the trauma producers by voting them out everywhere . . . ." Ms Chilcutt may have a better idea: pack them all off to Alcatraz or some remote island and let the beat them crap out of each other instead of the rest of us. 😉 Additionally, I believe President Jefferson said something to the effect that a free society should tolerate "error[s] of opinion" as indicative of the strength of a free society FOUNDED on REASON. Tolerance is NOT legitimation and, as our third President also argued, vigilance is the price of our liberty. Preventing those who seek tyranny over most of us from achieving it is not, in itself, tyranny. We are allowed to fight back; yes we are. From the place in which Vice President Harris struck a signal blow for democracy last Tuesday: https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/historic-document-library/detail/thomas-jefferson-first-inaugural-address-1801
4. ". . . . where everybody gets a voice who is trained to use it by a much better educational system and participation in the life of the community in good ways. The freedom of the speech that we are hearing is not freeing . . . ." Really important thought for me to chew on, Ma'am. I would dearly love to see proper civics and history classes, together with at least some course-work in the humanities to promote critical thinking, in the core curricula of a at least a decided majority of public schools (from ages eleven through eighteen). Without that admittedly paternalist teaching, the country can not produce citizens that live and breathe the 'democratic' or 'republican' spirit, as Baron Montesquieu argued in 1748, and will deteriorate into anarchy followed by tyranny. We may be seeing this break-down in our day. Another point on the freedom-of-speech: the Citizens United decision, in a shocking display of double-speak, limits free speech in the name of advancing it. How? Wealthy people and deep-pocketed P.A.C.s -- deemed 'persons' -- basically preclude most, if not quite all, of free speech.
Robin, I apologize, but will not atone, for the length of this response. Your thoughts are really important to me and elicit a detailed response. Thank you from the bottom of my heart delivered with a smile on my verbose visage.
Hi Ned, I don't consider this late although it's nearly 3 days, but it's still a lot faster than snail mail ;-) We're just trying to save the world and this country first that's all. I don't know if this is more Jewish than anything else but we consider speech itself an action; ‘lashon hara’=’bad tongue’
Which makes all the sense in the world, because of course it has an effect, just like writing does. We are seeing the middleing media making use of poor tongue every single day, as if they had no citizen responsibility for what they leave out, because what they include is basically for profit. But it quite obviously is distorting people's minds by the millions, so yes speech is technically free and it should be treated like an action is, with its relationship to violence and harm, other than name calling I suppose. In the past we might have thought of swearing as violence though I can't cite any thing on that. But that's obviously not a concern lately; we have to have some way of letting off steam without harm! The yahoo approach is meant to harm and that is a free speech limit right there. It is weaponizing swearing. And that's the difference… Great talking with you. I'm off to save my metabolic system with hot chocolate.…
Good points, Robin. The wisdom tradition of Judaism is apt here; the vile goes whence vile flows. On 'free' speech: speech leading to imminent harm is not protected. The challenge is that when Trump drumpfs Taylor Swift by writing to his truth-social propaganda channel, "I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!", he is writing in code. He may well be declaring open season on Miss Swift. When confronted with that possibility, the fat fascist will say, "Jeez, I was simply expressing my feelings. I did not ask anyone to harm that woman."
Well, J.D., whether your husband's departure is recent or further past, I regret reading of your loss. As a life-long bachelor whose parents died young, there days (e.g., 11sep01 or 06jan21) that I am glad that Mom and Dad were not around to see.
I believe that the massacre of decency, integrity, inclusion, and truth-telling may not have started with Trump, but has been dangeroulsly inflamed by him.
He has massacred our faith that people will see the difference between good and horrible.
I witnessed similar problems when I was still in So. Cal. People who were given work permits because not a single American citizen wanted to do the backbreaking work they did on farms and in fields for what they were paid. A bunch of 'willding teens' beat up an elderly immigrant and left him on the sidewalk. I wrote an article for a local news outlet in Charlottesvile, VA that included the kinds of jobs that only Mex. immigrants were willing to take.. on local farms. Back breaking, low paying work. There is a lot of food that wouldn't reach American tables if it weren't for immigrants. They work as orderlies, nurses aids and janitors at hospitals, schools, etc..Being fluent in Spanish, I was invited into homes, family gatherings and celebrations where we danced and sang. It felt as I was a member of their families. That we're undergoing big challenges is no secret... I just wish more people knew the truth of what's happening! And remembered that chances are high that, at some point, their ancestors were immigrants.
Those were his orders to the storm troopers when the January 6th putsch failed.
Now the would-be Führer and sidekick have unleashed them on the people. Their race war has begun. And this will go on until the new Nazi leadership is stopped once and for all or the Republic has been overthrown.
Michael, the question, what are we going to do about it? The courts just can't seem to hold Trump and Kump accountable for any of the bullying they have done and now it moves again into threats and perhaps, violence. When will enough be enough?
There is nothing more un-American than spreading rumors or outright lies about any racial , ethnic or religion of citizens , including legal immigrants. Those doing this are descendants of newcomers, probably dirt poor like most Americans were 100 years ago. They may no longer be poor but they are still dirt.
Vance and his faithful haters going after Haitians, who from what I have read, are hardworking beneficial members of Springfield. Vance should be sued for slander.
“If others are not going to devote funding to operationalize or weaponize the conservative vision, then the 85 Fund needs to weigh its support much more heavily in that direction.” —Leonard Leo, billionaire conservative activist and founder of the 85 Fund, in a letter to grantees
"At just 25 years old, Leo was a researcher who worked alongside the George H.W. Bush White House to defend Justice Clarence Thomas against sexual-harassment allegations during his infamous confirmation hearings. Leo also supported Justice Samuel Alito’s nomination to the high court and served as a judicial adviser to the Trump administration, where he handpicked many of the former president’s judges. About 86 percent of Trump’s appointees to the federal courts of appeals are associated with the Federalist Society. Leo also suggested and vetted Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett as nominees to the Supreme Court."
Here in Maine, Leo is using Mt. Desert Island as a laboratory for his antidemocratic bent and religious extremism. Leo instigated police to arrest a young neighbor who had shouted at Leo from a moving car (his mother, who was drving) also shouted but was not arrested.) They'd been driving through town when they passed Leo. The police audio tape shows Leo lying that the young man had been stalking his family and had shouted at his young daughter. The DA declined to prosecute the case. The young man won a settlement in the civil rights case he brought. Leo also had police threaten an elderly activist and goaded the Bar Harbor town manager into diverting town resources to suppressing her First Amendment protected chalk messaging project. Leo has supported the opposition to a local based initiative for affordable housing and opposition to enforcing a successful citizens initiative limiting cruise ship disembarkations in Bar Harbor (although the town in which Leo lives in a shorefront estate does not allow cruise ships at all.) He also funds opposition to off shore wind projects. Leo is funding extensive renovations of the Catholic Church in Bar Harbor - where the priest's subservience to Leo has driven away long time parishioners. Leo has also bought the Catholic church in 'his' town and is repurposing it as a model religious 'cultural center' - with tax free status. Leo also funds a right wing extremist media in Maine. (Which we have found scours the internet for mention of Leo and 'outs' and attacks critics of Leo.) AND Leo is funding Republican candidates in Maine. Most notably the opponent to Democratic CD2 Rep. Jared Golden. Golden, a Marine vet who saw active duty and who supports heritage industries and workers rights, is the most conservative Democrat in Congress and has so far maintained a coalition of moderate Independents and Republicans along with Democrats. Leo is working to undo that.
I have always been struck by the irony that back in the day, some voters were worried about the influence of the Pope on JFK. I always thought that was nonsense. But here we have ultra religious fascists operating under the radar to undermine our democracy - handing it to the oligarchs that fund them.
Here is another example. Maybe Dan Brown was really on to something? :)
Yes, my mother talked about how the country was afraid if they elected a catholic we would be ruled by the pope. She hated that assumption and our family wasn’t catholic.
I'm not sure who did more damage to our democracy - Newt Gingrich or Mitch McConnell. Newt told the Republicans in the House not to fratrenize with the Democrats and changed the schedule of the House so each member could travel home for a 4 day weekend to reduce contract with members of the other party. Or McConnell who blocked appointments by the Democrats and stopped most of the Democratic proposed legislation that came through the Senate.
We need to get the House back into control of the Democrats and keep control of the Senate.
Thank goodness McConnell will no longer be Senate Majority Leader.
I get funding emails from Sherrod Brown all the time. I think we all need to help him with funding so he doesn’t lose his seat in Ohio. But I’m not familiar with the Democratic senate candidate in Montana that she mentioned. Maybe we need to shovel some dollars there too. We should keep both in office to further the goal of reducing Republican power in Congress.
I get emails and texts for donations from Sherrod Brown all the time too. But also get numerous donation requests from Jon Tester, senator from Montana, who has a working ranch there and farms, tends to it and says he’s the only current member of congress that is also a full time rancher/farmer.
This week I sent some donations to the Harris/Walz campaign, members of the Squad and VoteVets but now it’s time to send some to support these two Democrat Senators of Ohio and Montana.
The end of the Republican Party as a respectable counterbalance to the Democratic Party, began with the combination of Newt Gingrich and Mitch McConnell. I put 100% of the blame of where we are today on them. Sure, there were other events that proceeded them, but they turned the dial to 11 and never looked back.
I have been donating to both Tester in MT and Brown in OH (I am in FL, working hard to replace the despicable Rick Scott!). Any suggestions about what else can be done to help them from Florida?
Actually, I think they are clever and ambitious. McConnel’s plan to stack the courts has worked. They never sleep, they just keep thwarting American ideals and shaping our country to their liking. I can see no way of stopping them unless people vote, vote vote with so much of a majority that they have no chance of taking over. What frustrates and saddens me is that republicans have zero integrity. Their thirst for power is overwhelming and it’s evident they will hurt anyone who gets in their way. Or, they will cause harm to large groups, like the Haitians in Springfield in order to manipulate people into voting for them. How will we ever defeat them when they have so much money to do their dirty work?
What I find more disturbing is the widespread ignorance of the American public who fall for their lies. Until they wake up we will live under this threat.
"You come home, and you’re like half a person. The other half of you is still back there, where at least it made sense. Where, even with the bullets and the blood and the chaos, you knew what mattered. You knew that the guy next to you was willing to die for you and you for him. And you look around and think … it shouldn’t take a war to make the world that simple." —Leroy Jethro Gibbs, NCIS, The Arizona, S17:E12. He's right. It shouldn't take a war. Hopefully, what it will take is a landslide D victory in November.
I fear we have woken up to the destruction, too late. I hope I am wrong
But all we have to do is look at Texas and if we aren't successful with Harris/Walz and Congress, Texas politics is what we will be facing, across the nation. Republicans have it in a total wrap.
To turn around Texas, it would mean getting rid of the three Amigos at the top, all are criminals, and shifting the balance of the legislative body...in a state where we are abandoned by the DNC and the Republicans are taking campaign donations hand over fist from rich Texas Oligarchs. We are fighting as hard as we can...yet the Republicans here have several aces up their sleeve (read their 2024 platform) and are committing countless voter intimidation and repression acts. Our Supreme Court is on the Republican side and apparently the DOJ doesn't care. HELP. Texas would be blue, if voter oppression wasn't so effective here.
I could count the ways.....so many ways they have strangled us. And how they are turning Texas into a cesspool of pollution and third world infrastructure.
Think outside the box - Grassroots organizations are primarily made up of civilians advocating a cause to spur change at local, national, or international levels.
Even in computer ads they are trying to connect Sherrod Brown with this. I live around 45 min from Springfield (south of Dayton,) and Brown is a decent Senator. I don’t want to lose him. The parents of the boy killed in the car/bus accident don’t want to see their son’s death used as a political football and they have condemned attacks on the Haitian people in Springfield, who are here legally. People said similar things about other immigrants, including my own Irish ancestors.
I figure that the Harris/Walz team doesn't need my money, but they will need a Democratic Congress, so I'm sending my money to Sherrod Brown and Jon Tester.
Angus King (I-ME) does receive any financial support from the DNC since he is an Independent. He is friends with Jon Tester and they sent out a email to give to their campaigns and they will split the money.
Having lived in 10 states over 69 years, I have been served by dozens of Senators and Angus King may be the best. I feel very fortunate.
The interview with the boy's father is heartbreaking.
To desecrate his memory is unforgivable like Trump's trip to Arlington where he desecrated the bravery and valor of everyone that ever served in the military
What really bothers me is the influx into Springfield of the neo-Nazis and other extremist groups are foisting this bullshit on others and being Trump and the Republicans brown shirts of their Nazi organization. I do not kid myself that I will see what my grandfather saw when he helped liberate the concentration camps in 1945. If the Republicans win, it will be because every Democrat did not vote. I pray the movement of the young people will grow into a groundswell of new judges, lawyers, and elected officials at the local level who, in 10 years, will be the leaders of a great nation.
Sharon, I agree they are not lazy, but they are ignorant. More specifically, if a person is wise, then the person is constraining their own ignorance. Conversely, if a person is not wise, then the person's ignorance is unconstrainted.
If I'm constraining my own ignorance, I'm not reflexively assuming someone who disagrees with me is wrong. Conversely, if you disagree with someone whose ignorance is unconstrained, you always get some version of "I'm right, you're wrong, and this conversation is over."
Ideally, if a person's ignorance is unconstrained, then the person is a child whose ignorance is constrained by wise parents, and then the unwise child becomes the wise adult. My grandson was wiser when he was 5 than Mitch McConnell is now.
Question: What's the difference between wisdom and maturity? Answer: The words are different even though the meaning is the same.
We have far more potential voters 18s old to 29 than they do and that number will grow each and every year going forward so the challenge is to organize effectively to promote the right to register online and to be sure to vote thereafter! There is one very effective charitable organization which does that effectively only in “truly competitive” congressional districts and senate election states: www.TurnUp.US so please click on that right now and contribute generously tax deductible! Please copy this and paste it going forward to your friends and family?
TurnUp is led by Harvard students and is premised exclusively on support for abortion and IVF rights, effective gun safety legislation and fighting Climate change!
When they go low, Democrats rarely go low, but if another MAGA goes low is it ok to pile on?
Matt Drudge is reporting or re-posting that Laura Loomer and DonOLD are having an affair. Regardless of whether it's true or not, I'm sure the white Christian evangelists will give convicted felon DonaldTrump a pass.
And did the Trump's never have a dog or cat because Melania was an immigrant?
To me and not only to me, this feels dangerous, more so than in the past. 52 days to go and then what? The media bares some blame here in not calling out lies when they see them. And the MAGA rallies are hate rallies, yet they are normalized as fun type political events. Reporting this activity as regular politics is irresponsible on their part. I am thankful for soon to be president elect, Kamala Harris for calling out the disgraced, twice impeached, four times indicted, former president for what he is.
I listened to an interesting interview of author Arlie Hochschild, a sociologist, on NPR's "Here and Now" yesterday. The story is part of the series "Asking Appalachia: Coal, Trump and the politics of Eastern Kentucky." She spent 10 years in the area, and has written two books on the region. I would highly recommend listening to this explanation of why, and how, a significant demographic of our country connects with tfg.'s rhetoric. https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2024/09/13/eastern-kentucky-shame-trump
I read it and it reminds me of my cousin’s comment when I visited PA. “Nobody is helping me”, he said. Big employers moved to Mexico and other countries. The biggest business in the area moved out and got tax write offs worth millions. People lost their jobs and many lost their pensions, even their homes. They are hurting, they want action, they need help. Worst of all inflation is killing them especially at the supermarket. They feel the minorities are getting free stuff but not them. And they don’t even want free stuff. They want work at a decent pay. Trump may not actually do anything for them but at least he heard them and tells them what they want to hear. The racism in the MAGA world is a big attraction, it is like a glue that binds them together. No, you will never persuade them to vote for Harris. They are being had and they don’t care. Trump says things that they like. Nobody else does. So they gave up on voting blue and it is a national tragedy.
While your readers here have an excellent grasp of the significance of the Judicial branch of government, too many are intentionally abstracted. In spite of being informed of the significance of the Supreme Court vacancy during the 2016 cycle (as McConnell blocked Garland's nomination), swing state voters elevated the criminal Trump (by a thin margin) and that has led to the overturning of Roe v. Wade, overturning the Chevron decision, and eviscerating the concept of "and justice for all" with the deplorable immunity decision. While we discuss the importance of stopping the implementation of the Project 2025 plans to end the American experiment, the implementation has already begun with the ethically-challenged and extremist members of SCOTUS who are now in the majority.
As I wrote previously four Supreme Court justices will be 70 years of age or older when the next President is sworn in. Whether you are in a blue state or a swing state -we cannot accept the assured elevation of an incompetent like Aileen Cannon or an extremist like Matthew J. Kacsmaryk into an already bent and bias court.
Democracy is kept honest by checks and balances, seen as an impediment by those who would be kings. Power self-evidently tends to corrupt, so we divide power in what ideally would be equal shares with the vote. Again, there are bullies who hate that. The erosion of checks and balances is inherently anti-democratic, and as a naked abuse of entrusted power, corrupt. We have been fools to allow corruption to spread this far, but we still have a chance to stop it short of sepsis.
Yup. Repairing dysfunction of the legislative branch is key, in my opinion. Legislative is closest to the people and has ceded a lot of it power to executive in recent times. Danielle Allen’s recommendations for reform of Congress seem like an excellent starting point to me. The question is — how do we get a consensus on doing that when it means some ceding of power / influence by current members of Congress? I think that there could be a very popular argument made for bringing power more directly to the people (by increasing the number of reps and reducing the size of districts) — should be possible to get the people on board. What about the elites?
I am unsure of exactly how; the devil is always in the details, but somehow we need to make legislators more accountable to the public. And far less accountable to billionaires. I was just speaking by phone to my Canadian son-in-law who is himself contemplating a run for public office. He tells me that Canadian limits on campaign spending are far more strict that ours (a low bar indeed). Just as science and it's underlying method needs to be understood as a proven useful process for identifying accuracy rather than an oracle of settled truth, The Constitution remains a living thing in modern society to the degree is confidence-worthy recipe for justice. If interpretation of that recipe is resulting in empirically provable injustices, there is either something wrong with the recipe or those who are cooking with it.
We are ostensibly a a nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men (sic) are created equal; and despite hypocrisy, our better angels have demanded an expansion of that principle to be more universally extended. Not surprisingly, entrenched and exploitive interests are opposed, but they count for what?
We, as a human society, are constantly learning, via good faith contemplation, and our arts and sciences. Would it not be wise to periodically, if not constantly, explore and examine what justice worthy of the name, and worthy of acceptance as universal personal and societal rights really is? It's not a settled matter.
we are capable of fear for a reason; but it's a evolutionarily primitive response, that is all to easily manipulated. Especially when insufficiently moderated by the evolutionarily later cerebral cortex.
My mentor who was captured at Corregidor and spent 3-1/2 years in POW and labor camps surprised me by his appreciation for the way we made peace with the Japanese after we fought them as hard as we needed to during the war. He understood how so many people could be motivated to fight for something they believed to be true but would change back to more civil cooperation when the leaders (or misleaders) were removed from the mix.
He didn't say it in the same words as Nietzsche but lived by the words “Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster... for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you.”
The connection to the more complete story about Wounded Knee shines a bright light that I imagine the authors of Project 1776 would never want revealed.
Jim Young Freeport, ME, thanks for reminding me of Netzsche's quote. I try to live by it. It's our challenge now, to not be sucked into their vortex, individually or collectively. We can't overcome the crazy, if we become crazy too.
I am not sure that there was any realistic option for the US to avoid WWII, at least once Hitler got Blitzkrieg rolling. In Vietnam and Iraq, our behavior did not seem to be so clearly self-defense and our "Marshall Plan" for Iraq was costly boondoggles rather that aid the suffering public. As in police work, the use of force, even deadly force (such as in the sniper attack on Trump) may be a practical necessity, but as the last remaining practical response, not the first. Our aim as a society should be to prevent and deescalate violence, not to celebrate it.
Thank you for this gem. My daughter was teaching in rural Japan and speaks pretty adequate Japanese. My wife and I spent about 25 days in the little town and touring where foreign tourists rarely reach. Our reception was overwhelmingly positive. The US defeated Japan, and the necessity for the use of atomic weapons remains controversial among historians I have read, as has been our slow withdrawal from Okinawa, but while we changed Japan, we did not enduringly subjugate it. We did, in fact, promote democracy, as we did in Europe with the strategically brilliant Marshall Plan.
The role of conquer is in the past (if not present) of many societies, including our own. It is the predominant bane of humanity and of civilization.
Don't knock fear. Fear has kept me voting Democrat for my whole life. Reagan=Hitler and Republican=Nazi has been the underpinning of my politics since I was old enough to think about it, and nothing has ever dissuaded me from that position. It just keeps getting reconfirmed day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year.
As I said, we have retained the capacity for fear for a reason, and our world is very dangerous as will as sustaining from the moment we are born. A bawling infant is crying for survival, and survival is wired into us. How could it not be? But the evolutionarily older parts of our brain, vetted though natural selection, are not the smartest, nor the most humane, and it takes a certain openness, discipline, empathy, and humility to avoid injustices, and to avoid becoming useful idiots for the predatory urges of tyrants.
"Accustomed to trample on the rights of those around you, you have lost the genius of your own independence, and become the fit subjects of the first cunning tyrant who rises." -Lincoln
And also BTW, I believe that wisdom marries what is most likely to be true with what is most likely to matter. Science can help us order our priorities,but not make all of our decisions. Matters of the heart require good faith introspection and mindfulness. Nature sez, "You can do what you want to (to the planet) but, the next time you see me coming, you'd better run".
So Vance is willing to put his own constituents at risk of violence so he can ensure control of the senate, as dictated by McConnell. I don’t even have words for the republicans, traitors to the American people.
It infuriates me that Vance is getting away with this complete dereliction of duty to his constituents in OHIO and, worse than that, actually putting some of those constituents in harm's way. Why isn't the media pressing him on this??? What is he doing to help the city of Springfield, OHIO or the residents of Springfield, OHIO who have been suffering decline for the entire length of his term of office? Ask the damn questions, please!!
Why does the Republicans’ convicted criminal candidate so lie and lie?
The majority of Americans have decency. They read good books, see worthy films, hear music well-rooted in the land and in great predecessor music. Most well value democracy, neighborliness with varieties of fellow citizens.
So what lets the Republican party’s criminal so rant, scorn the truth?
First, imagine a way of thinking that shuts out the varieties of the human and the natural, a way of thinking excluding truth’s nuances, complications, pains.
Imagine a world where there’s no conversation among us but, instead (as Yuval Noah Harari has been saying), only dictatorship, with crowds willing to let demagogues spew, insult, feed hatreds, raise alarms.
In that world, what remains of truth may sinks to but skeletal logic, so things repeat, following logic that is only linear, chronological, mechanical. Suitable to conveyor belts, treadmills, assembly lines.
Imagine, too, life abstracted only to the logic of groups, packages, categories.
What measures all this vulgarity, the linear and the grouped, as if complicated emotions and variations in human and natural truths can never enter?
What’s guilty? – the standardized testing which has so ruled U.S. schools as to cripple our tens of millions yet lined up for that orange criminal’s gushing lies.
How much lower can the Republicans go? The RNC gives us two immature candidates that act like uneducated, lazy 12-year olds. And the racial disinformation and threats of animal slaughter is supposed to scare us? Seriously folks, it’s embarrassing to witness what the Republican National Committee will waste our taxpayer taxes on.
I grew up in a part of Southern California, where a racist cult called the John Birch Society would stuff our school lockers with hate speech propaganda in order to provoke a race riot before every holiday. and sure enough the campus got divided, and we were let out of school a day early. We had bad neighborhoods where the gangster kids would jump you at Halloween and steal your candy. The difference now is the troublemakers have a megaphone to broadcast their garbage.
Be strong, stay civilized, and everyone should boycott the RNC, and keep voting Democrat Blue, up & down the ballot until the shameful behavior gets weeded out. Get involved and complain to the press for their sane-washing and bias reporting. We need our money to be used for much needed infrastructure, policies for a better economy, better schools, affordable healthcare, sustainable housing, climate crisis innovation, etc, etc, etc.
And shame the shameful behavior, the like of which, as in Heather's historical vignette, can result in the slaughter of innocents. Republicans have strayed so far out of bounds that they have no business whatsoever of being allowed in the game.
When I was 12, a year after having spent 4 years in Hawaii as a military dependent going to schools with a wonderful mix of kids from all over the world since soldiers married to so many women from different countries or ethnic/racial groups were often assigned there, we got an eye opener during Halloween in our first year in Missouri. The teenagers tried very hard to scare us younger kids with stories of Missouri's Bigfoot, "Momo"or "Mo Mo," though I forget the name they used in 1957.
We weren't scared by them, but some of them started beating the littler kids that weren't scared by the stories (not close enough around us, for us to see). I guess my brother and I and our friends were too big and unafraid for them to attack us but it always disgusted me when the fear mongers turn violent when people don't believe their lies.
Thank you Kathaleen. You are so right. The only thing I would disagree with is that they aren't acting like 12 year olds, more like 5 year olds that have tantrums when they don't get their way...no offense to 5 or 12 year olds!
Tantrums are a developmental response when you are very young and relatively unskilled and powerless. Extreme similar behavior (I say extreme for who of us has never emotionally regressed?) can become destructive and even deadly, empowered by adult status in an adult body. How much of humanity's preventable suffering can be attributed to that?
The RNC’s latest wasted effort is that RFK Jr wants all the printed ballots with desperate Bobby listed as a separate candidate to be thrown out, and fix the Trump candidate section, then reprint
the ballots, which jeopardizes the out of state, Military ballots that mail from out of the country to be late, etc. They could of just done a disclaimer, but no, lawyers were paid to redo the ballots. RNC doesn’t care how much money they waste.
But that is exactly what they are doing in North Carolina. The ballots were already printed and their state "Supreme Court" ruled that they had to be reprinted...voter suppression for sure and taxpayers pay for the cost!
The idea that you can capture the full potential of a human being in a few numbers is unrealistic and inhumane. Insofar as the outcomes of degrees are ruled by numbers rather than accomplishments, that system is self-fulfilling and circular; and that may have a lot to do with why so many, even so many "well educated" people revere Trump. Too much circular thinking.
But underneath it all I see the sociopathic "love of money"; and of power, of which money in a species.
A Blue Wave is a necessity, and also, we are ostensibly electing representatives, not super-heroes, so We the People need to be clear about what they are meant to represent and be held accountable for.
Jim, the Democrats don't go low for the most part. But, since I'm an Independent and former Republican I enjoy the Lincoln Project ads where they goad Trump.
Here are two rumors (conspiracy theories I heard while driving cross-country the past couple of days.
1) This according to Matt Drudge who I don't read or support) - "Trump is having an affair with conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer." That's just what we need, an invisible First Lady and Trump's mistress living in the WH.
2) The reason the family Trump doesn't have any pets is because the immigrant Melania keeps having them served for dinner. And remember she brought her father and mother over from Europe to assist with Barron during Trump's administration.
When you factor in teaching to the test and making sure that the test outcomes reflect the "education" being delivered, and the complete absence of teaching critical thinking or analysis of information, yes. That standardized testing, as in "No Child Left Behind" which has given us a generation of people who, by and large, cannot think critically.
As you probably know, Professor, fans of Drive By Truckers refer to certain clever (dare I say brilliant?) turns of phrase by songwriter Mike Cooley as "Cooleyisms." I'm gonna call the last paragraph of today's letter a "Heatherism," a brilliant synthesis of complex ideas in a single, telling, straight to the heart and gut reference and analogy. Well done.
I am routinely surprised that, despite my past study of American history, the letters from the Professor leave me with an improved understanding of what has gone before while putting today into context. Today’s letter is yet another example.
I’ve been trying to understand how the Haitian immigrant story got its start. Finally, here is a straight forward reveal of the roots of the insidious lies told to get here. It’s astounding. The tie in to Wounded Knee was outlined brilliantly. Thanks Professor Richardson. Your value to those of us willing to read with an open mind is difficult to quantify, but it is significant.
I recall how some teachers/professors could kill the joy even in subjects that were my passion, while other could bring even what I would otherwise overlook to life. The latter virtually breathed life into instruction by showing the connection and/or resonance with our own lives and circumstances. Heather has that talent.
Jeff Beenfeld, while every other well-written well-considered response picks up important aspects of these horrible situations, you alone hit what I consider to be the proverbial “nail on the head”: HCR’s historical citation of Wounded Knee. This would never have occurred to me. But now that she has cited it, one must respect the observation (and HCR’s undoubted conviction) that history tends to repeat itself. Wounded Knee saw indigenous Americans physically-sacrificed for partisan political gain. Will legally-landed Haitians be sacrificed (and many of the privileged rest of us in myriad lesser ways) for partisan political purposes? Is there anything we can do to prevent this? VOTE YOUR CONSCIENCE. IF YOU BELIEVE SMALL DONATIONS CAN CHANGE VOTES, MAKE THEM.
YEs, Craig & Mark, HCR weaves a brilliant tapestry of history, one I fear is all too true and close to current experience. Whether or not people are actually killed in Springfield as a result of MAGAt lies, and I certainly hope it doesn’t reach that point, the MAGAts have ALREADY created the impression of ciivil disruption and unrest there with the bomb threats and resulting school closures “because of the (legal) Haitian immigrants," disruption and unrest created entirely by their own lies!
Fascinating how the Wounded Knee massacre had its origin in party politics in Washington.
I guess my remaining - necessarily modest --campaign donations will go to reelect Democrats in Ohio and Montana, and to get rid of Ted Cruz and flip Texas BLUE!
Such a tragic history of our nation regarding race, the displacement of native Americans and desecration of their land.
As the Wounded Knee Massacre started in Washington D.C., so did all the Indian Wars through the belief in manifest destiny.
And it's still those same kind of racist, loud-mouthed, white pride maniacs(the actual 'savages') through the ages stirring up hatred, promoting and participating in violence of immigrants, freed slaves, refugees, LGBTQ, whomever they hate ad infinitum.
Going on and on about the Haitian immigrants with these unfounded fabrications and their hateful diatribes is yet another disturbing and disqualifying act that Trump and Vance are guilty of.
As Voltaire said "Those that can make you believe an absurdity, can make you commit an atrocity..."
Feels like the lie about the Sandy Hook shooting all over again. It cost Alex Jones in the neighborhood of a billion dollars. Let's hope this one gets nipped in the bud right now. As in this week!
Haitians, in particular, are bad targets. They are very hard-working. I was in New York for several years in the ‘80s. When I got there, there were a lot of Haitian cabdrivers. When I left after 3 years, there were a lot fewer. They had saved their money and moved up to “black cars” ( so-called for the color of the vehicle, not the driver), sedans you could call for pick-up. My mother was in a nursing home for over a decade; most of the women who took care of her were Haitian. The guy who delivers our paper is Haitian. He works seven days a week and has another job, maybe two. Springfield is lucky to have those Haitians.
The Wounded Knee massacre started in Washington? Wow. What would I do without Heather Cox Richardson and Rachel Maddow providing the true and untold stories of our country in the appropriate historical context. So much respect and gratitude to these two brilliant women.
Well then. Not only do we have Leonard Leo to "thank" for purchasing Justice Thomas, the tie-breaking vote that gave us Citizens United, we also have Mitch McConnell, Doctor of Obstruction, who took advantage of weaknesses in the US Constitution, not only to give us Trump and his 3 Justices, but to prevent the American People from accomplish anything productive.
This is a bit off topic, but Democrats need to keep an eye on the election in Maryland if they hope to retain control of the Senate. Polls show Democrat County Executive Angela Alsobrooks beating former Republican Governor Larry Hogan, but I just don’t believe them. Maryland is a blue state, but Hogan was a popular Governor and much of Maryland is, in fact, quite conservative. Alsobrooks will have to dominate the vote in the more populated counties near Washington, DC in order to win. She might, but Hogan scored well in those areas in his last run for statewide office and Alsobrooks and organizations supporting her are basing her entire campaign on abortion rights. She has no ads up talking about inflation, housing, education, transportation or other “bread and butter” issues. If she doesn’t start talking to Maryland voters about how she will improve their lives, she will lose this race.
Here is some more worrying evidence from a Maryland Matters, a local online news source.
Progressive Maryland, a left-leaning group, has budgeted about $500,000 for the effort to defeat former Gov. Larry Hogan (R) and expects its volunteers and field organizers to hit between 100,000 and 200,000 voters’ doors before Election Day.
Progressive Maryland troops have been surprised to encounter voters on their target list who view Hogan favorably, or are reluctant to support Alsobrooks, or seem disinclined to vote at all. “We’re trying to persuade people more than we want,” Larry Stafford, Progressive Maryland’s executive director. said.
Stafford said he frets that Democratic leaders and donors, especially at the national level, are taking the Maryland Senate election for granted, and are assuming the state’s 2-1 advantage in Democratic voter enrollment will carry Alsobrooks to victory.
Stafford’s fears appear to be confirmed by remarks U.S. Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, gave reporters on Tuesday. Peters said his top priority this November is defending incumbents in tough races — placing Montana’s Jon Tester and Ohio’s Sherrod Brown at the top of the list for resources.
Thanks! I’m hoping my worries are misplaced, but I have lived through Kathleen Kennedy Townsend’s and Anthony Brown’s disastrously run, unsuccessful gubernatorial campaigns. She lost to Bob Ehrlich, He lost to Hogan. Alsobrooks is not well known outside of Prince George’s and Montgomery Counties. She needs to REALLY run up the score in PG, Baltimore County, Baltimore City, Howard County and Montgomery County. She needs to do fairly well in Frederick County. She appears to be doing absolutely nothing to cut into Hogan’s lead in the rest of the mostly rural, conservative state—the Eastern Shore, Southern Maryland, and the Western counties. I see Hogan AND Trump signs everywhere in those areas AND in the traditionally Democratic strongholds. Here’s is a risky strategy. We’ve seen this movie.
Unless Democrats regain control of both the Senate and the House, America will just be stuck in a continuous downward spiral. Without upgrading public education to include critical thinking skills, history, the arts, science, reading, etc., Yuval Noah Harari’s horrific predictions of dictatorship, with brainwashed crowds willing to let demagogues spew, insult, feed hatreds, raise false alarms, may become the bleak future. We have to help Democrats win by a huge majority in November.
Your ability to tie history to today is so brilliant, Dr. we feel so fortunate to have discovered you and as depressing as today’s events are, sometimes worse than their historical precedents, you make our day. Thank you especially for this letter. I hope the people of Ohio wake up to how they’re being manipulated.
- Pulled Quotes -
''Haitian immigrants, who were welcomed to Springfield by officials eager to revitalize the city and who are there legally, say they are afraid.'' Their fear and any harm are on the hands of Donald Trump .
So where is law enforcement? Since when can Nazis disrupt city council meetings and call in bomb threats? Wake up Merrick Garland. Imprison them. Take their stuff away.
Most law enforcement officers, nationwide, are Trump supporters. Their unions have made that clear, not to mention the sheriffs, who are, generally speaking, even worse than city police forces.
If that includes the department of Justice and the FBI, then some asses need to be booted out. Assemble a team of certifiably non-bigoted FBI agents and head on over. Not all military people and law enforcement officers are bigoted.
Edit: I served on active duty in the military for 13 years one month and 24 days (not that I was counting). I know what I stated above to be true.
Beverly Gage's recent prize-winning biography of J. Edgar Hoover, "G-Man," documents that he was a racist, a member of a KKK-aligned college fraternity, and that from the beginning, and for much of his tenure, agents were not only recruited from that fraternity, but that membership was a de facto requirement for the job!
Hoover’s been dead for 52 years. No organization will be completely free of maggots, but with periodic disinfectant they can be held to a minimum. As they should be. As any organization with integrity should demand that they be.
That is what I wrote to my governor before Biden was elected, that he should be focusing on clearing the state law enforcement of White Supremacists. I do not think he got the message in one way until after January 6. By then it was too late.
William, please get rid of the dehumanizing “maggots”; call them MAGA supporters. Most of us here are speaking out against 45’s and JD’s dehumanizing of the legal immigrants in Springfield; we need to resist using their methods.
It's well past time for something to be done about it.
Calling people, whether politicians or not, "maggots," is dehumanizing. I take your point, but disagree with your language.
Jim, one would hope that since Hoover has been dead nearly a half-century, things would have changed. I am thinking the Black Lives Matter Movement had it right in needing our police forces to be reworked into something that is less violent, more involved in actual service, and fewer supremacists of any kind. Now, how do we get that going? None of those guys want to give up the power they think they so richly deserve. They now have powerful fraternal unions that are really training grounds, it seems for the bad behavior, protecting the bad apples as though that is the way to keep law and order. There are other countries that do it better. Maybe we need to follow some of their guidelines as to hiring, training, removing those who don't have the ability to do the job right, etc. When a community does not know if it can depend on its police it is not a safe community.
I just finished my song yesterday, “They’re Eating Cats and Dogs Says JD Vance.” I was just now going to record it on my phone and put it on my YouTube channel but I prefer to perform it at a local music festival in Connecticut and get the pro recording up on my channel. But here are the words for now:
In Springfield they’re eating dogs
And now they’re eating cats
What can a childless Catman do
With those awful facts
Maybe move to Katmandu
Or flee in a catamaran
Or just move to Katmandu
With my girl and dogs and cats
He broke down the doorways
Of the Capital
They followed his directives
So Tyrannical
In Springfield they’re eating dogs
And now they’re eating cats
What can a childless do
With those awful facts
(Signed: Catman Bill — my YouTube channel name and stage name. Unfortunately this platform doesn’t recognize rhymes of verse and I need to double space them
Please don’t. The jokes and memes are fueling the spread of the lies.
Please stop the viral spread & potential for great human harm .
Please read my response to Maggie May.
I agree with Helen - none of us need nor want more verses, songs or memes about what is being done to immigrants whether in Ohio or elsewhere. Someone will pick it up & spread it even more, which is the current way of life right now.
Oh stop it. Besides, I changed a pivotal word from “awful “ to “erroneous “
Better. I don’t think you understand satire and snark.
Truly warped and wrapped and then woven into every weedy space.
And way to make $$….
The only lines of your song that will go viral will be quoted out of context and for the wrong side. They will be taken as truth or facts rather than in the context of a satirical song: “In Springfield they’re eating dogs/ And now they’re eating cats …”
Then we should simply close everything down and put tape on our mouths like the Sisters of Mercy did to me in grade school before expelling me. Are you getting ready to expel me again? I’ll answer: YES.
William, checking in from local law enforcement as a liberal. I can't speak for the FBI, but the three local agencies with which I am familiar (2 city PDs and one county SO), the more liberal city has the more liberal police force. The conservative city and the county are less liberal, but there's a good percentage of liberal LEOs in both those jurisdictions.
We live in a social system. A change to that system is not necessarily an improvement. A reactive change is almost certainly not an improvement. Anyone who thinks it’s okay for someone to tamper with a system they don’t understand, please pick a system that won’t harm me when it stops working, as it will.
To improve a system, start by understanding how the system is supposed to work, and then understand why the system isn’t working that way. That’s a lot harder in the short term, but a lot easier in the long term.
Or go ahead and tamper with the system, and that will make it a whole lot easier in the short term, and a whole lot harder in the long term.
We do need to change law enforcement. Perhaps the current incarnation isn't hurting you, I imagine a cis white guy, but people of color, women and LGBTQ people are hurt everyday. There are other people who are important, not just you and your kind.
There is no "us" and "them," there is only "us." As MLK put it, "We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly." That doesn't mean that unnecessary suffering is equally distributed. Nor does it mean that the responsibility to end unnecessary suffering is equally distributed. It means that unnecessary suffering is unnecessary, and from everyone who is given more, more will be demanded.
Now we are cis white guys. Holy crap. And everyone is hurt every day. Hello. No they are not. Sorry I don’t buy into it. That’s what is creating the MAGA movement and you just don’t understand it.
James, we’ve been working to change the system of regarding people who are different as less than human for generations. Psychologists have advanced theories as to why it’s so easy for humans to set up clans and “other” those who don’t belong. Speaking out about this injustice is reactive by its very nature, just like pulling a toddler’s hand away from a hot pan is reactive. I believe that being reactive is justified in both cases, because we have seen generations of harm done by dehumanizing groups of people.
Interestingly, far too often the script runs: be discriminated against (Irish, Germans, Italians, etc.), assimilate, and then choose to discriminate against another group that is relatively powerless. (It helps if the group has physical characteristics that make members easily identifiable at a distance.)
“Leaders” get power over MAGAs (and other assimilated groups) by convincing them that the powerless group seeks to take their inherent power away (vote illegally, kill their pets) from them. The wealthy “leaders” hide the larger power grab by those who got their wealth (and continue to get a lot of more wealth) by working the system (refusing to pay contractors, lobbying officials to ignore laws or rewrite them).
You're right. You have to be reactive. But know when to be reactive and when to deliberate. A doctor who knows when to be reactive and when to be deliberate will react to stabilize the patient, and then deliberate by taking the time necessary to understand the cause of the patient's symptoms. That's true even when the "patient" is America.
Thank you.
If what you say is true, Rex, then it's not law that they're enforcing.
Unless it's law of the jungle, law of the AR-15, and the murderous laws of racism, plus enough misogyny to keep the Clarence court happy.
The Leonard Leo Court.
That is the Charles Koch court.
AMEN!
Sounds like America to me
Equating "America" with its racist right wing religious extremist element - as represented by the Republican party - is a generalization which elides and defames the majority of Americans who repudiate MAGA and all it stands for.
Then let us prove it in this election cycle.
Yeah.., "one nation indivisible" worked for me. What can be stronger? A "christian nation".. "under god"., A god? Err ahh, WHAT kind of god? Sun god? Maybe go ask one of those preachers with two Gulfstream jet airplanes, bought by his/her flocks, who speaks with "god" at 35,000 feet. Huh? GMAB!
Let's face it.., we are dealing with human behavior. Yes, Human, behavior, learned or otherwise. Not so different from 'animal instinct' when subjected to repeated abuse. Experiencing kindness , not so much.
Absolutely - read Jessica Pishko's new book "The Highest Law in the Land" about the unchecked poer of sheriffs and how that threatens our democracy. An eye opener for me!
The Texas sheriffs I have had contact with may prove her point.
Rex, you may be on the "left coast" but, your opinion sure isn't somewhere out there in 'left-field'..., IMHO. And, I'm afraid that if a national poll were accurately taken, it would probably support your unfortunate observation. We could go into the reason(s)why, but for right now I think we're surrounded. Springfield, Kent State, Waco, Charleston. We're "on our own" only if we stay quiet about this. So, start by putting a Harris Waltz sign up.
And it is a chain of personnel affected by movements such as dominionism in our own ranks. We all know that military service frequently leads to law enforcement officers. And I'm sorry but the dominionism movement is very prevalent in our military today.
Seriously. Be very careful who you elect as sheriff. Most people don’t realize how much entrenched power these folks have dating back decades if not more than a century. They are the law in many states and yes, many have sold their souls to the cult of MAGA.
True where I live. LE is the enemy of anyone who is not a Klan member or White Supremacist or White Christian Nationalist.
And that is the crux of our problem. Could this make them rethink that insanity.
Citations needed.
Robin, the largest police union in the country has endorsed Trump. They also endorsed him in 2020. They have chapters in 46 states.
https://fop.net/2024/09/fop-endorses-trump/
Mary Hardt, I am a believer in unions when they do good work for the common good. Unsurprisingly, there are some concerns about FOP.
https://www.npr.org/2020/06/08/872470076/the-fraternal-order-of-police-a-union-that-stands-in-the-way-of-police-reforms
That is sickening.
There's something else that sickening. More than half of white voters rooting for Trump.
I think we could be looking for some changes in that regard if for no other reason than people are leaving the party and who are in political positions so may have figured out commonsensically that laws must be upheld. Their own jobs could be on the line at the police level. But I think we're still in for a long rehab in at least 21 states. So the local action is really really important. I love that Kamala has been educating herself at the higher levels and can work with Biden's many many successful plans already in the works. We do have to stop being in conflict all the time, because there are quite a lot of people who have never yet understood how a democracy really works. And who have learned only how to whine and complain as a default position.
Our son is a sheriff's deputy. He won't vote for 45. But he will vote for a third party. He thinks he's sending a message to both parties by doing so. He won't listen to us or his brother when we ask him to vote to protect his nieces future.
My son feels disrespected by the media and the public because the "Liberals" agenda has turned us against law enforcement. The real problem lies with the law enforcement officers who have committed atrocities. Sadly, we've had too many examples in Colorado alone. Elijah McClain, a small, 23 year old, black man, with autism, did nothing wrong, he just looked weird because he wore a ski mask in August. So a concerned individual called and reported him to the police. The police response was totally inappropriate and brutal. An innocent person, who was just on his way home from shopping at a convenience store, died three days later from injuries and treatment by the police officers and the paramedics.
Sadly, the good things law enforcement does rarely makes the News. We don't have statistics on how many lives are saved by law enforcement officers, etc.
Rex Page, you're right. Many law enforcement officers lean right. Some are right wing extremists. This goes back a long way. Have you read the book Prequel by Rachel Maddow?
It is not easy reading but it explains some of the history of what we are experiencing currently.
That's powerful history telling Heather - wake up Ohio and Colorado!
The Buford T Justice Society
the DOJ is not. Garland needs to act.
That could be true, but there’s personal opinion and then there’s the law. Don’t they have to follow the law?
We should bring back that fine old tradition of giving medals to people who kill Nazis.
Now, now TC. How about denouncing them and being willing to testify against them in court? Kill a Nazi, become a Nazi. Kind of a dead end.
I don't think any of the guys in World War II who kept Waffen-SS scum from making it to the POW camps were "Nazis."
TC - apply a little logic. The guys in WWII were acting within the law.
That's OK.
If the government passes a law saying "people who act like Nazis can be shot" that's OK.
However, someone has to lay down a definition of what "Acting like a Nazi" is. And who exactly has the right to shoot them.
And that starts a precedent, because the NEXT government would then be entitled to initiate a law that says "people who act like Liberals can be shot."
Which makes life a little hairy, dontcha think?
TC is a rabble rouser.
Please do not equate the American military with vigilante militias.
No, of course not, TC. I was just reacting to violence as a first response to violence. In war, it's essential, but maybe not yet in Springfield OH. How about arresting them and force-feeding them dead pets?
Ew.
What if the Nazi fires first?
Duck and dial 911. Then shoot back if necessary. If you're armed...
Difficult to duck if your head is now missing.
Worst posting of comments I’ve ever read here. What is WRONG with you all, making bad jokes about a HORROR like McConnell TAKING OVER OUR legislature??? THAT was Heather’s point. You all that wrote ditties and attacked ALL police just missed her ENTIRE POINT. I am vastly disturbed by so many of you this morning. But I’m MORE disturbed by Trump, Vance, and the direction the Republican Party continues to operate. We will self-destruct if the majority of Americans do NOT wake up to the very real danger of just about the entire Republican Party - and WHO they choose to lead it.
Thank you. Well said. I always read Heather’s posts with a mix of horror and fascination having lived long enough to see the patterns being woven thanks to hindsight. But the adage still holds that those who are ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it.
The thread fails to realize how truly Nazi the Republican strategies are become.
The inventions of Vance about the Haitians eating pets reeks of the terrible rumors the Nazi’s used to deprecate and then victimize the Jewish populations of East Europe. Establishing any human group with depraved eating and ritual sets them aside from humanity.
Then Mitch McConnell and the party strategies to weaponize the courts for Political results was the very fulcrum by which the Nazi’s used existing legal apparatus to make Hitler Dictator.
We are not to distant from the very steps of 1933- 1935 to assume control of the Weimar Constitutional Government by determined extremism.
Frankly, since the ACLU defended their right to march in Skokie Illinois, depriving the rights of the Jewish residents of Skokie to basic safety. And although that particular march was canceled, the precedent thus set laid the foundation for things like Charlottesville's Unite the Right rally and Nazis disrupting city council meetings. And is why the ACLU will never ever see so much as a brass farthing from me.
That's like saying that you won't vote for Kamala because you don't like her policy on immigration. The ACLU has done more good than you obviously choose to know.
Public, peaceful demonstrations are an American right....so far. But no group should be allowed to disrupt a city council meeting.
We support the ACLU bigly and have for years. They do great work. By the way regardless of what people are marching about, in this country we still have the right to march thankfully. That is basic in this country.
The ACTLU said they would no longer defend the rights of far right extremists as part of their mission after the debacle in Charlottesville.
Isn't that precious? So which kinds of extremists who want me dead would I have to worry about them using my money to defend if I did donate? No, don't answer that.
The bitter pill of free speech and freedom to assemble is that they apply to everyone. My mom lived in Skokie for many years, and my dad fought in WWII. We were horrified by the march you cite. We don't like anything the Nazis, neo or otherwise, stand for, and we also don't tolerate censorship. That is one of the authoritarian tools that gave the Nazis so much power in the first place. The ACLU didn't set the precedent, the constitution did.
The right is to peaceable assembly, which I think is impossible when the purpose of your assembly is to advocate for the violent destruction of whole swathes of society on the basis of their race, religion, or class. The purpose of such assemblies are not protest nor petition, but intimidation, and I do not believe the first amendment guarantees a right to intimidate.
The ACLU was one of the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement. But now that they have become free speech purists, they too often cross the line.
To me, there is a difference between phoning in bomb threats, which is illegal but hard to prosecute, and shutting down speech, no matter how repugnant.
I think the fact that law enforcement didn't drag the Nazis from the city council meeting shows a divided Springfield.... unfortunately. Racism runs deep in America. I think Ohio, in the early 1900s was the heart of the KKK.
Racism is everywhere in America.
I thought it was Indiana.
Damn, I thought it was NC
This is my question too. Where is law enforcement and DOJ???
Also, someone speaking on behalf of the Haitians should sue Vance. As we have seen, hitting the likes of Trump in the wallet does get results if only the assurance that circumspection is a virtue.
It does seem that the Haitian immigrants may have a case, if they can invoke libel and/or slander laws.
The neo-Nazis, repellent as they are, still have the right to speak. I have not heard that they were unduly disruptive in Springfield. Hatefulness is protected by the First Amendment.
But not inciting violence, repubs like to split hairs, but we are becoming bald.
But doesn’t hate speech by its very nature incite violence? Aren’t shady Vance and the convicted felon adjudicated rapist, in fact, in citing violence by what they are saying about Haitian immigrants? Just because this is the law at the moment, doesn’t mean the law is right, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t examine this, and perhaps change it in today’s atmosphere…
incite- not insight. That said, there is a line that I presume has to be adjudicated between inciting violence and hate speech. But it should be clear. Trump incited violence imo. This should be before the law in Jack Smith's case.
I fixed it. Thanks for pointing that out. Agree with what you’re saying here.
I think the UK has stronger laws about this. Hate speech is too broad a term and vulnerable to interpretation. Inciting violence gets closer. Trump uses hate speech all the time. He comes right up to the line and even crosses it into incitement I believe.
Agree!
I think the tricky part of incitement that lets Chump escape is that if one doesn't explicitly call for violence, listeners who interpreted remarks as calls to action are liable, but the speaker isn't. I think.
Actually, it isn’t. Even Freedom of Speech has limits. There’s the famous example of yelling ‘fire’ in a crowded theater, there are laws against libel and slander, there are laws against hate speech and incitement
Obscenity, child pornography, defamation, false advertising, true threats, and fighting words.
The First Amendment truly isn’t absolute.
Actually you can yell fire in a crowded theater.
https://reason.com/2022/10/27/yes-you-can-yell-fire-in-a-crowded-theater/
In the early days of the labor movement, some folks who were on strike were holding a Christmas party, and an unknown person snuck in and yelled 'fire!' There was a panic, and quite a few people died.
Beat me to it, Potter...
Hate speech is one thing. I don't believe there is a law against it. Can you cite? But inciting violence is something else.
In Oregon, there is a statute that reads with the language of "by word or conduct, one person places another in fear of injury, serious injury, or death". It is elevated by classification when that language is based upon the "perception of the actor's belief that the person is of a particular race, gender, religion, or sexual orientation". I know we've got a state statute on riot that prohibits 5 or more people engaging in "violent or tumultuous conduct"
Yes, this should be applied to Vance and Trump. They know exactly what they’re doing. Trump desperately needs to bring to life his lies about the country being an awful place, filled with violence and going downhill. His minions are helping him with their incursions into peaceful society. Elon Musk is amplifying them with his millions of bots because he’s being promised a role in our government. He ignores that he’s here illegally. He invalidated his visa and somehow, okay bought his way, into our government and get billions of our tax dollars while working to destroy our democracy.
I believe other states have similar laws/statutes, but there isn't any such federal law. I'm not sure that there's no fed law, but I think that's the case.
Agree! What is most important, in my view, is that the "law" is enforced in a "CIVIL" manner. If the result of what ever is taking place is imminent damage (other than meeting disruption, etc), itmust be handled civilly. Time, not being of the essence. Take photos, record it, bring those responsible to court. Again, de-escalate things. Bring it to court. Our police are sometimes too aggressive because they may have been 'burned' too many times for trying to be polite. Still, using force that is unnecessary, is not civil. We need civility here in this great nation if we want to remain.
Jon-I wonder if Black people were parading through white communities with hatefulness whether it would be protected.
We all know the answer to that…
errr.., ahh.., Gina, maybe not so much. Bbbboink!
There were bomb threats called into elementary and middle schools. Children had to be evacuated and classes moved. You don't consider that "unduly disruptive?"
I think we need to revisit the first amendment. I don’t see why speech directly contradictory to the founding ideals of our country should be allowed. Deport these people!
Odious as White Christian Nationalism (Nazi-ism) is, aren't all entitled to their beliefs and free expression? If the 1st were to be amended, who would decide what can or cannot be said? Whomever it would be is likely to have their own biases, and there we are back in some sort of authoritarianism, and it doesn't matter if it's rightist or leftist. Eventually it will shift to the other position, and someone(s) will always be unhappy.
Garland should have been fired six months into his tenure. He's been a milquetoast from the start. He is leading us straight into Nazism.
I agree with you William. But Trump is telling the country that he will imprison democrats who are trying to bring his mob to justice, creating in the minds of his faithful followers an equivalence that doesn’t exist because we are not committing crimes. They are. These false rumors, which are stated as though they are true by Trump, Vance, Loomer and the rest of them, endangering the innocent Haitians and democrats in general is a real and very powerful form of terrorism. They must be stopped. They ought to be arrested and charged with attempted murder along with seriously disrupting people’s lives. Disturbing the peace of our country — of our countrymen. Isn’t that what it is? Trump said himself that dems caused his attempted assassination. But we are only reporting what he has in fact done. He is telling his people we stole the 2020 election! And many, many other complete falsehoods. Trump rapes women then says the immigrants are raping our women!
Very well said Susan. I was a moderate Republican from the first primary I voted in which was for Ronald Reagan in 1981. I hate to admit I voted for Trump in 2016. But I voted Democrat full ticket in the 2020 presidential election. I got banned from Newsbreak for my retort to a Trumpster who called me a number of foul things for being a Biden supporter automatically because I was against Trump. I actually don't approve of everything President Biden has done (policy on Israel being a big one) but holy cow he is by far the lesser of the two evils and yes I'm voting for Harris. I hope I'm wrong, but I think the Orange Chump is going to win and if he does the US is doomed.
The November 5 election is a national referendum on good versus evil. I expect good to win. Even with the vestigial evil of the electoral college.
The onus there is on local law enforcement to begin any investigation. These terrorists aren't stupid, and, until some evidence is produced that they've violated federal law, the DoJ could only get involved at the request of the local police department or, maybe, the Governor who is, possibly coincidentally, a Republican. It's unlikely that Garland would do anything anyway, he seems completely disengaged from any of the political activity taking place.
There was a recent New Yorker article on the FBI and what they do (and don’t do) about dealing with these groups. Interesting that there are some left wing folks doing some of the footwork here.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/08/26/infiltrating-the-far-right
Thanks for the link Mark. And I might add, JC!
William, please stop making the good guys out to be the bad guys. It's bad enough when the bad guys make the good guys out to be the bad guys.
In deed. Where has law enforcement been for several decades while the republicans have been able to be engaged in voter suppression, which has been going on since Reconstruction, threatening poll workers including federal and state officials with harm to them and their families for carrying out their patriotic duties to insure honest and fair elections. Let us not forget when more than forty years ago a group of wealthy, ultra conservative, white supremest realized that if something wasn’t done and Democracy was permitted to follow it’s natural course that they would no longer be in the majority and that they would no longer hold sway over the minority and that they could not let that happen. So all these decades later we find ourselves as a nation under the threat of losing everything and becoming an autocracy. A lot of the blame can be given to what’s suppose to be the loyal opposition, the Democrats for not challenging effectively over the years the threat our freedom.
Robert🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏😀
Po Merrick. I think he still wants a Supreme Court job.
I read a report that the Springfield Jazz and Blues festival was disrupted by gun toting neo Nazis and the cops treated it as a minor affair.
One of the casters on the Meidas Touch Network posted a video of Florida cops mistreating a Miami Dolphin they'd pulled over for speeding. Also his team mates who came to help him. They were just outside the football stadium on their way to play a game. The poster's point was that if these guys weren't famous, monied, and lawyered up, there wouldn't have been any fair remedy for them. As it was, one of the cops (I think the one who kicked the baller when he was handcuffed and on the ground) got put on admin duty. But there were many cops there who stood by or assisted in the assault who haven't been reprimanded or punished... yet. We shall see.
Trump is the monkey that serves as the mouthpiece for Project 2025 and the misogynistic overturn of Roe vs Wade. It’s insulting to our democracy. Boycott the Republican National Party - up and down the ballot, until they come to the table with a reputable party that doesn’t make America look like a joke.
This is small, but a start. In TN an experienced repub state senator lost his primary. He was outraged. He claimed it was due to Dems voting repub in the primary and asked the repubs to investigate. Meantime, reporters went to his district and talked to voters. Voters said he’d been told people opposed school vouchers and was instructed to vote against them. He didn’t. So by a large margin they declined to “investigate” and his loss stood. This needs to happen EVERYWHERE.
(This is a PET project of our gov, who lost last year but intends to try again; this appears to be the hill he wants to stake his political career upon.)
And in Texas....the governor refuses to accept the will if the people. Vetoing legislation that funds public schools and doesn't give him the vouchers he wants. When I was young and naive, thinking our elected officials were supposed to represent us, Senator Cornyn's response to my letter expressing my disagreement with one of his Congressional votes was that he knew better than me, what was needed for our State and Country. That's when I realized that certain politicians don't care what their constituents think or want
By "certain" I think you mean repub...
I'm not sure it is only Republicans....it seems that way...but in Texas we have a couple of Democrats that are against reproductive rights or LGBTQ rights.
Sorry to hear...
Just an additional FYI - in Tennessee, we have open primaries. The TN General Assembly passed a law that requires a sign be put up at the polling places that to vote in a primary, you have to be a “bona fide” member of the party, which absolutely no explanation as to what “bona fide” is supposed to mean, and flying in the face of the open primaries we have. As far as I can see, the signs mean absolutely nothing except voted intimidation. When I just voted in the most recent primary elections, I walked right past the sign and up to the poll worker, who asked which ballot I wanted. I was not requested to show anything to make sure I was “bona fide” anything.
So, if Democrats voted in the GOP primary, against the state senator mentioned above, it was 100% legal.
Tennessee is one screwed up state with their legislators! Love the two Justins and Gloria. Do you think she will win? I sure hope so.
I would love for that to happen.
Marsha Blackburn refuses to debate her. Right up there with refusing to have a town hall for years. She is odious.
We are primarily screwed up because we got gerrymandered and voter suppressed to smithereens after 2010, thanks to the red wave that year, and Project Red Map.
I also saw a video summary of an article from the NYT recently, that pointed out that there are about half a million Tennesseans who had felonies in the past that still cannot vote, because of the maze of rules and beaurocracy for getting voting rights reinstated. A very small percentage get their voting rights back.
The GOP in this state is monstrous.
Wow!
Amen ! I try to stay up on the factual news but it is so grim I worry about my own health.
I wrote yesterday that we as Americans can only hold our heads high if and when we actually have solid laws that protect us all. Not partisan law. Reading Heather today so boiled my blood. How can we have let so many ugly humans control our very existence ?
I know this ramble doesn’t do one thing except get it off my chest. I apologize to all who have workable solutions. We need you!!👏🏻🙏🏻🎶
I feel your frustration and so my mantra and efforts have been focused on the solution at this moment is to VOTE BLUE UPAND DOWN THE TICKET, to make it difficult for any challenges to the result and then focus on moving forward to change these processes that have been slowly pushed down our throat to all a minority to rule over the majority. The movement of change started with the election of Biden and slipped a little with the midterms that gave power to the do nothing extreme Repubs except spew lies. So the lesson is to change that balance and make the moves to correct laws that the majority simply don’t agree with, Roe v Wade, presidential immunity, citizen’s united etc. Stay focused and when you can promote why voting blue is to their benefit to stop this slope into autocracy or fascist rule. The world does not need any more Hitlers anywhere, but most definitely not in o e of the most powerful and richest nations in the world, the USA. There really is no other choice, VOTE BLUE UP AND DOWN THE TICKET.
Amen!!!
Exactly
Exactly. I am so sick of these fucking nazis.
on the hands of Donald Trump via JD Vance.
The love the color
The MAGA hypocrisy knows no bounds when " MAGA Republicans have spread the lie that Haitian immigrants there have been eating white people's pets," is compared with the actual truth that a white US governor shot her puppy to death....
Isn't it amazing how fast that story went away?
The fire hose reporting of disgusting behaviors just doesn’t stop, does it.
The whole situation is appalling. I wondered how people as erudite as Albert Speer could be Nazis. Thank you Senator Vance-on-fire for showing us how . . . a**hole. The nakedness of this man's ambition is not only distasteful but emblematic of exhausted Reaganism.
Yes wonder is in order for the rank obscenities that especially Trump in the latest iteration has given people's darker natures a path for if you can call it a path. SHAME on the crippled corporate media. Shame. Let's start listening to the psychologists who have been quietly and even professionally been engaging with their own ethics of Duty To Warn, despite the machinations of the American Psychological Association in refusing to give up the Goldwater Rule. There is an obvious emotional sickness, a harmful psychological deficit, which informs a moral deficit in the case of what the Republican Party has promoted and allowed. And I really do wonder at the enormous excess that it takes to jar some of the Republicans out of their privileged complacency or whatever you want to call it, perhaps half baked morality would do it? Whatever you want to call it their actions are completely disgusting and not worthy of a supposedly grown adult in any democracy anywhere. Let's curb the trauma producers by voting them out everywhere all the way up and down, and then we can do the real work, as many of us are already doing, of honoring the good work already done for the greatest number of people, where everybody gets a voice who is trained to use it by a much better educational system and participation in the life of the community in good ways. The freedom of the speech that we are hearing is not freeing, being only confrontational and harmful, in fact not even at all truthful. At all. Media do your GD work! Psych Health classes mandatory for liars?
What I found most useful for getting anyone, especially bumper sticker message spouting Trump supporters, to become a little more thoughtful was a sign and business card handout that had a graphic of the Statue of Liberty (more properly, "Liberty Enlightening the World"), that started with:
-Who You Voted For
-is not as important as
-What You Stand For
Simply asking them about what they stood for, with a little more background, calmed them down and we actually found some useful things to discus further.
The business card pointed out a few non-partisan sites they could go to listing a lot more information about all candidates biographies, votes, positions, ratings, speeches, and funding sources.
One such source we used back in 2016, and still going is https://justfacts.votesmart.org/
Votesmart has made a free tiny example of the facts they have on thousands of candidates (most elected officials), key vote descriptions, their votes, campaign contributions, etc, at https://static.votesmart.org/static/pdf/2022_VSDM.pdf
I opted for a Kindle version for the new Kindle Scribe I bought so I can use the very long battery life while out in places like Wolfs Neck Woods State Park where I can't hike the distances (or speed) my wife likes so much. It also helps overcome the gaps in cell phone coverage if people are interested but can't check it out on their phones.
Love the card handout. My Repub best friend (years ago) voted Repub only for SC control. Thanks for vote smart info.
Hooray! Jim, it requires effort, what you do. Inspires me to try some more. Thank you.
Personality disorders are not mental illnesses. It’s who they are. Free speech does not allow inciting violence. Haters always split that hair. Liars and bullies need consequences. We are the ones who need Health Classes, while they need Alcatraz (or equivalent).
Very well stated, J.D. Thank you. The assignment of personal responsibility for what one views as another's repugnant, even violent, behavior is especially important. Murderous dictators like Putin are simply evil; they are sickening, not sick.
Yes, thank you. Specific and to the point; being in a health field I tend towards health-related explanations.
When I worked at public school, years ago, a psychologist told me that personality disorders are usually set very young and usually not responsive to standard psychological treatment models. Perhaps inpatient if people know what they are doing. But it’s usually the behaviors, which are always problematic, that need to be addressed. I didn’t really believe it at the time, but I do now.
Mental illness can be treated with success. Critical to know the difference. Malignant narcissism can be attractive up to a point. And beyond dangerous if never challenged. What more proof do we need.
Our ability to prove has been purposely compromised by the righteous right as a way of deferring self-responsibility by layering the lies so deeply that they become a new kind of truth that can't be addressed by facts at all. I wish Dems would get deeper into that which actually Kamala has - we couldn't find a more prepared person I'm so happy to say. Even no matter what happens in November. I've been wondering for some years now if anybody is researching the childhoods of individual righteous perps other than Mary’s revealings of her family. And the huge question you outline is how do you educate the parents of those school kids and by also bypassing somehow the angry mob that doesn't want to be held responsible. I am beyond glad that one of my daughters put me on a path of emotional intelligence years ago, considering my own early challenges with which I have been dealing for more than 20 years from a professional and way longer than that. These discussions are so great for implanting endangered sanity.
Are we completely helpless before the upcoming election? We currently control the Senate and the Presidency. What can we do besides wring our hands, to clear out the problems in Springfield and Bar Harbor and any other places (Florida and Texas come to mind) while we still have power in at least some areas of government? Stop yelling at Trump about it, and put the power of the government into squelching these sorts of take overs of our country. It is the job of the Federal government (send in troops, Mr. President) to put down these anti-American activities, if need be. Stop the illegal activity by FL governor DeSantis to spend state money to lobby against two amendments on the ballot and to enter people ‘s homes to scare citizens into not voting!
Why isn’t the President throwing his full power into these things? He and Garland and the senate are sitting on the sidelines instead of pulling rank and using the power they have to clean up the country! We know, “Republicans” are planning to use that power as soon as they get the keys to the castle!
That question of seeming inaction perplexes me, too. There may be constitutional or legal constraints designed to protect the rule-of-law. I do not really know.
Perhaps the President and the Attorney General perceive the society close to a civil war and they find themselves sitting on top of a proverbial volcano, trying not to tip it into an eruption through decisive actions provoking lawless responses.
Then, maybe, the republican experiment is finished.
The only thing I do know for sure is that I need to get off my slothful and depressed hiney, volunteer, and vote.
Seems like reasonable questions.
And perplexing, too.
lot to chew on. Permit me to comment later, s.v.p. Insightful commants; thank you, Robin!
Great comment, Robin. I will briefly respond to some points that zapped me between the eyes.
1. "SHAME on the crippled corporate media. Shame." In the click-bait culture, it is easier to titillate than to do the hard-work required to repudiate.
2. "Let's start listening to the psychologists who have been quietly and even professionally been engaging with their own ethics of Duty To Warn, despite the machinations of the American Psychological Association in refusing to give up the Goldwater Rule." If you are not familiar with Dr Bandy X. Lee (M.D., M.Div.), you may find the actions she is trying to lead to be heartening. Dr Lee is leading the charge for just what you advocate; she has paid a price for her courage. At first (i.e., six years ago) her proposed intervention for the mental health crisis precipitated by then President, now candidate Trump, struck me as arrogant. These days, however, Dr Lee's leadership may be one of our final opportunities to avert the death of the republic. Of course, I have a crush on the teacher, so I am biassed. Here is Dr Lee's incisive take on the 10sep24 debate between Vice President Harris and candidate Trump. https://bandyxlee.substack.com/p/a-beautiful-debate
3. "Whatever you want to call it ... [the Republicans'] ... actions are completely disgusting and not worthy of a supposedly grown adult in any democracy anywhere. Let's curb the trauma producers by voting them out everywhere . . . ." Ms Chilcutt may have a better idea: pack them all off to Alcatraz or some remote island and let the beat them crap out of each other instead of the rest of us. 😉 Additionally, I believe President Jefferson said something to the effect that a free society should tolerate "error[s] of opinion" as indicative of the strength of a free society FOUNDED on REASON. Tolerance is NOT legitimation and, as our third President also argued, vigilance is the price of our liberty. Preventing those who seek tyranny over most of us from achieving it is not, in itself, tyranny. We are allowed to fight back; yes we are. From the place in which Vice President Harris struck a signal blow for democracy last Tuesday: https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/historic-document-library/detail/thomas-jefferson-first-inaugural-address-1801
4. ". . . . where everybody gets a voice who is trained to use it by a much better educational system and participation in the life of the community in good ways. The freedom of the speech that we are hearing is not freeing . . . ." Really important thought for me to chew on, Ma'am. I would dearly love to see proper civics and history classes, together with at least some course-work in the humanities to promote critical thinking, in the core curricula of a at least a decided majority of public schools (from ages eleven through eighteen). Without that admittedly paternalist teaching, the country can not produce citizens that live and breathe the 'democratic' or 'republican' spirit, as Baron Montesquieu argued in 1748, and will deteriorate into anarchy followed by tyranny. We may be seeing this break-down in our day. Another point on the freedom-of-speech: the Citizens United decision, in a shocking display of double-speak, limits free speech in the name of advancing it. How? Wealthy people and deep-pocketed P.A.C.s -- deemed 'persons' -- basically preclude most, if not quite all, of free speech.
Robin, I apologize, but will not atone, for the length of this response. Your thoughts are really important to me and elicit a detailed response. Thank you from the bottom of my heart delivered with a smile on my verbose visage.
Hi Ned, I don't consider this late although it's nearly 3 days, but it's still a lot faster than snail mail ;-) We're just trying to save the world and this country first that's all. I don't know if this is more Jewish than anything else but we consider speech itself an action; ‘lashon hara’=’bad tongue’
Which makes all the sense in the world, because of course it has an effect, just like writing does. We are seeing the middleing media making use of poor tongue every single day, as if they had no citizen responsibility for what they leave out, because what they include is basically for profit. But it quite obviously is distorting people's minds by the millions, so yes speech is technically free and it should be treated like an action is, with its relationship to violence and harm, other than name calling I suppose. In the past we might have thought of swearing as violence though I can't cite any thing on that. But that's obviously not a concern lately; we have to have some way of letting off steam without harm! The yahoo approach is meant to harm and that is a free speech limit right there. It is weaponizing swearing. And that's the difference… Great talking with you. I'm off to save my metabolic system with hot chocolate.…
Good points, Robin. The wisdom tradition of Judaism is apt here; the vile goes whence vile flows. On 'free' speech: speech leading to imminent harm is not protected. The challenge is that when Trump drumpfs Taylor Swift by writing to his truth-social propaganda channel, "I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!", he is writing in code. He may well be declaring open season on Miss Swift. When confronted with that possibility, the fat fascist will say, "Jeez, I was simply expressing my feelings. I did not ask anyone to harm that woman."
My husband wondered that his whole life. Glad he is not here to see what has been perking in his flawed but loved country.
Well, J.D., whether your husband's departure is recent or further past, I regret reading of your loss. As a life-long bachelor whose parents died young, there days (e.g., 11sep01 or 06jan21) that I am glad that Mom and Dad were not around to see.
He was a history buff, lived a lot of it.
They fear at the hands of Americans too stupid to realize the liar he is.
It's easy to blame trump, who at this point is obviously quite unwell.
But the problem lies with Americans themselves.
Sadly, true
Michael, their fear and any harm are on the hands of Donald Trump and every individual who supports him.
I believe that the massacre of decency, integrity, inclusion, and truth-telling may not have started with Trump, but has been dangeroulsly inflamed by him.
He has massacred our faith that people will see the difference between good and horrible.
And he welcomes the blame, or as he sees it the credit. He will walk away unscathed
Some day, Jeri, and I hope we are both alive, we will witness the demise of this traitor, this rapist, this criminal. I bet my life on it.
I bet so too, but I know what it will take. So do you
I think what trump and vance are doing is terrorism and they should both be arrested for the threats made to the population of Springfield, Ohio.
I witnessed similar problems when I was still in So. Cal. People who were given work permits because not a single American citizen wanted to do the backbreaking work they did on farms and in fields for what they were paid. A bunch of 'willding teens' beat up an elderly immigrant and left him on the sidewalk. I wrote an article for a local news outlet in Charlottesvile, VA that included the kinds of jobs that only Mex. immigrants were willing to take.. on local farms. Back breaking, low paying work. There is a lot of food that wouldn't reach American tables if it weren't for immigrants. They work as orderlies, nurses aids and janitors at hospitals, schools, etc..Being fluent in Spanish, I was invited into homes, family gatherings and celebrations where we danced and sang. It felt as I was a member of their families. That we're undergoing big challenges is no secret... I just wish more people knew the truth of what's happening! And remembered that chances are high that, at some point, their ancestors were immigrants.
"Stand back and stand by!"
Those were his orders to the storm troopers when the January 6th putsch failed.
Now the would-be Führer and sidekick have unleashed them on the people. Their race war has begun. And this will go on until the new Nazi leadership is stopped once and for all or the Republic has been overthrown.
Michael, the question, what are we going to do about it? The courts just can't seem to hold Trump and Kump accountable for any of the bullying they have done and now it moves again into threats and perhaps, violence. When will enough be enough?
Their fear, if real, comes from the difference in culture, which is understandable. But still eating pets is untrue.
There is nothing more un-American than spreading rumors or outright lies about any racial , ethnic or religion of citizens , including legal immigrants. Those doing this are descendants of newcomers, probably dirt poor like most Americans were 100 years ago. They may no longer be poor but they are still dirt.
Vance and his faithful haters going after Haitians, who from what I have read, are hardworking beneficial members of Springfield. Vance should be sued for slander.
Wow powerful and informative letter Frightening too what lengths these Repubs will go to
“If others are not going to devote funding to operationalize or weaponize the conservative vision, then the 85 Fund needs to weigh its support much more heavily in that direction.” —Leonard Leo, billionaire conservative activist and founder of the 85 Fund, in a letter to grantees
"At just 25 years old, Leo was a researcher who worked alongside the George H.W. Bush White House to defend Justice Clarence Thomas against sexual-harassment allegations during his infamous confirmation hearings. Leo also supported Justice Samuel Alito’s nomination to the high court and served as a judicial adviser to the Trump administration, where he handpicked many of the former president’s judges. About 86 percent of Trump’s appointees to the federal courts of appeals are associated with the Federalist Society. Leo also suggested and vetted Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett as nominees to the Supreme Court."
Here in Maine, Leo is using Mt. Desert Island as a laboratory for his antidemocratic bent and religious extremism. Leo instigated police to arrest a young neighbor who had shouted at Leo from a moving car (his mother, who was drving) also shouted but was not arrested.) They'd been driving through town when they passed Leo. The police audio tape shows Leo lying that the young man had been stalking his family and had shouted at his young daughter. The DA declined to prosecute the case. The young man won a settlement in the civil rights case he brought. Leo also had police threaten an elderly activist and goaded the Bar Harbor town manager into diverting town resources to suppressing her First Amendment protected chalk messaging project. Leo has supported the opposition to a local based initiative for affordable housing and opposition to enforcing a successful citizens initiative limiting cruise ship disembarkations in Bar Harbor (although the town in which Leo lives in a shorefront estate does not allow cruise ships at all.) He also funds opposition to off shore wind projects. Leo is funding extensive renovations of the Catholic Church in Bar Harbor - where the priest's subservience to Leo has driven away long time parishioners. Leo has also bought the Catholic church in 'his' town and is repurposing it as a model religious 'cultural center' - with tax free status. Leo also funds a right wing extremist media in Maine. (Which we have found scours the internet for mention of Leo and 'outs' and attacks critics of Leo.) AND Leo is funding Republican candidates in Maine. Most notably the opponent to Democratic CD2 Rep. Jared Golden. Golden, a Marine vet who saw active duty and who supports heritage industries and workers rights, is the most conservative Democrat in Congress and has so far maintained a coalition of moderate Independents and Republicans along with Democrats. Leo is working to undo that.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/09/leonard-leo-letter-85-fund-network-conservative-agenda-weaponize.html
https://www.axios.com/2024/09/12/leonard-leo-conservative-groups-funding
https://ballsandstrikes.org/law-politics/leonard-leo-maine-cops/
https://www.bangordailynews.com/2024/09/06/politics/state-politics/leonard-leo-making-bigger-plays-maine-politics-joam40zk0w/
Translation: Vote for and support D candidates like your life depends on it.
Excellent reporting, lin* !
I have always been struck by the irony that back in the day, some voters were worried about the influence of the Pope on JFK. I always thought that was nonsense. But here we have ultra religious fascists operating under the radar to undermine our democracy - handing it to the oligarchs that fund them.
Here is another example. Maybe Dan Brown was really on to something? :)
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/26/kevin-roberts-project-2025-opus-dei
Yes, my mother talked about how the country was afraid if they elected a catholic we would be ruled by the pope. She hated that assumption and our family wasn’t catholic.
Evil in an “entitlement” package. And with God on his side. What can slow him down.
Thank you
My hatred for McConnell runs deep for his disregard for democracy.
I'm not sure who did more damage to our democracy - Newt Gingrich or Mitch McConnell. Newt told the Republicans in the House not to fratrenize with the Democrats and changed the schedule of the House so each member could travel home for a 4 day weekend to reduce contract with members of the other party. Or McConnell who blocked appointments by the Democrats and stopped most of the Democratic proposed legislation that came through the Senate.
We need to get the House back into control of the Democrats and keep control of the Senate.
Thank goodness McConnell will no longer be Senate Majority Leader.
There’s a special place in hell waiting for both of them.
I get funding emails from Sherrod Brown all the time. I think we all need to help him with funding so he doesn’t lose his seat in Ohio. But I’m not familiar with the Democratic senate candidate in Montana that she mentioned. Maybe we need to shovel some dollars there too. We should keep both in office to further the goal of reducing Republican power in Congress.
I get emails and texts for donations from Sherrod Brown all the time too. But also get numerous donation requests from Jon Tester, senator from Montana, who has a working ranch there and farms, tends to it and says he’s the only current member of congress that is also a full time rancher/farmer.
This week I sent some donations to the Harris/Walz campaign, members of the Squad and VoteVets but now it’s time to send some to support these two Democrat Senators of Ohio and Montana.
The end of the Republican Party as a respectable counterbalance to the Democratic Party, began with the combination of Newt Gingrich and Mitch McConnell. I put 100% of the blame of where we are today on them. Sure, there were other events that proceeded them, but they turned the dial to 11 and never looked back.
I have been donating to both Tester in MT and Brown in OH (I am in FL, working hard to replace the despicable Rick Scott!). Any suggestions about what else can be done to help them from Florida?
With you. McConnell paved the way for all of this.
I blame Moscow Mitch for all of this as well. I abhor him with every fibre of my being.
And what depths. Hell's sub-basement.
They are lazy and ignorant. The RNC is wasting our time and taxes.
Actually, I think they are clever and ambitious. McConnel’s plan to stack the courts has worked. They never sleep, they just keep thwarting American ideals and shaping our country to their liking. I can see no way of stopping them unless people vote, vote vote with so much of a majority that they have no chance of taking over. What frustrates and saddens me is that republicans have zero integrity. Their thirst for power is overwhelming and it’s evident they will hurt anyone who gets in their way. Or, they will cause harm to large groups, like the Haitians in Springfield in order to manipulate people into voting for them. How will we ever defeat them when they have so much money to do their dirty work?
What I find more disturbing is the widespread ignorance of the American public who fall for their lies. Until they wake up we will live under this threat.
"You come home, and you’re like half a person. The other half of you is still back there, where at least it made sense. Where, even with the bullets and the blood and the chaos, you knew what mattered. You knew that the guy next to you was willing to die for you and you for him. And you look around and think … it shouldn’t take a war to make the world that simple." —Leroy Jethro Gibbs, NCIS, The Arizona, S17:E12. He's right. It shouldn't take a war. Hopefully, what it will take is a landslide D victory in November.
Our brain-washed citizenry is a national shame. Started with Rush, then Rupert…
I fear we have woken up to the destruction, too late. I hope I am wrong
But all we have to do is look at Texas and if we aren't successful with Harris/Walz and Congress, Texas politics is what we will be facing, across the nation. Republicans have it in a total wrap.
To turn around Texas, it would mean getting rid of the three Amigos at the top, all are criminals, and shifting the balance of the legislative body...in a state where we are abandoned by the DNC and the Republicans are taking campaign donations hand over fist from rich Texas Oligarchs. We are fighting as hard as we can...yet the Republicans here have several aces up their sleeve (read their 2024 platform) and are committing countless voter intimidation and repression acts. Our Supreme Court is on the Republican side and apparently the DOJ doesn't care. HELP. Texas would be blue, if voter oppression wasn't so effective here.
I could count the ways.....so many ways they have strangled us. And how they are turning Texas into a cesspool of pollution and third world infrastructure.
Susan, I think they learned their evil ways from the criminals running my Ohio. We have a lot of work to do!
Think outside the box - Grassroots organizations are primarily made up of civilians advocating a cause to spur change at local, national, or international levels.
Even in computer ads they are trying to connect Sherrod Brown with this. I live around 45 min from Springfield (south of Dayton,) and Brown is a decent Senator. I don’t want to lose him. The parents of the boy killed in the car/bus accident don’t want to see their son’s death used as a political football and they have condemned attacks on the Haitian people in Springfield, who are here legally. People said similar things about other immigrants, including my own Irish ancestors.
I figure that the Harris/Walz team doesn't need my money, but they will need a Democratic Congress, so I'm sending my money to Sherrod Brown and Jon Tester.
Me, too! I was just getting ready to recommend this. We need these decent men in the Senate.
Hoping people find their way to support these campaigns:
Sen. Sherrod Brown:
https://www.sherrodbrown.com/
Sen. Jon Tester:
https://www.tester.senate.gov/
Me too
As am i
Supporting down ballot tickets is crucial. Tester, Brown, and Gallegos in Arizona.
Angus King (I-ME) does receive any financial support from the DNC since he is an Independent. He is friends with Jon Tester and they sent out a email to give to their campaigns and they will split the money.
Having lived in 10 states over 69 years, I have been served by dozens of Senators and Angus King may be the best. I feel very fortunate.
smart
The interview with the boy's father is heartbreaking.
To desecrate his memory is unforgivable like Trump's trip to Arlington where he desecrated the bravery and valor of everyone that ever served in the military
What really bothers me is the influx into Springfield of the neo-Nazis and other extremist groups are foisting this bullshit on others and being Trump and the Republicans brown shirts of their Nazi organization. I do not kid myself that I will see what my grandfather saw when he helped liberate the concentration camps in 1945. If the Republicans win, it will be because every Democrat did not vote. I pray the movement of the young people will grow into a groundswell of new judges, lawyers, and elected officials at the local level who, in 10 years, will be the leaders of a great nation.
You are so right, has been so for most of my long life.
Sharon, I agree they are not lazy, but they are ignorant. More specifically, if a person is wise, then the person is constraining their own ignorance. Conversely, if a person is not wise, then the person's ignorance is unconstrainted.
If I'm constraining my own ignorance, I'm not reflexively assuming someone who disagrees with me is wrong. Conversely, if you disagree with someone whose ignorance is unconstrained, you always get some version of "I'm right, you're wrong, and this conversation is over."
Ideally, if a person's ignorance is unconstrained, then the person is a child whose ignorance is constrained by wise parents, and then the unwise child becomes the wise adult. My grandson was wiser when he was 5 than Mitch McConnell is now.
Question: What's the difference between wisdom and maturity? Answer: The words are different even though the meaning is the same.
Ignorant, wise, or lazy, they are hell-bent on power and money. No matter the carnage…
Who cares about the motive if the effect is the same, right? But the motive is important if you need to prevent the effect.
True, but stop the bleeding first
We have far more potential voters 18s old to 29 than they do and that number will grow each and every year going forward so the challenge is to organize effectively to promote the right to register online and to be sure to vote thereafter! There is one very effective charitable organization which does that effectively only in “truly competitive” congressional districts and senate election states: www.TurnUp.US so please click on that right now and contribute generously tax deductible! Please copy this and paste it going forward to your friends and family?
TurnUp is led by Harvard students and is premised exclusively on support for abortion and IVF rights, effective gun safety legislation and fighting Climate change!
When they go low, Democrats rarely go low, but if another MAGA goes low is it ok to pile on?
Matt Drudge is reporting or re-posting that Laura Loomer and DonOLD are having an affair. Regardless of whether it's true or not, I'm sure the white Christian evangelists will give convicted felon DonaldTrump a pass.
And did the Trump's never have a dog or cat because Melania was an immigrant?
And destroying our democracy!
And their understanding of the long game.
To me and not only to me, this feels dangerous, more so than in the past. 52 days to go and then what? The media bares some blame here in not calling out lies when they see them. And the MAGA rallies are hate rallies, yet they are normalized as fun type political events. Reporting this activity as regular politics is irresponsible on their part. I am thankful for soon to be president elect, Kamala Harris for calling out the disgraced, twice impeached, four times indicted, former president for what he is.
We can NOT let radical far-rightwing extremists take over America.
That never works out very well.
I listened to an interesting interview of author Arlie Hochschild, a sociologist, on NPR's "Here and Now" yesterday. The story is part of the series "Asking Appalachia: Coal, Trump and the politics of Eastern Kentucky." She spent 10 years in the area, and has written two books on the region. I would highly recommend listening to this explanation of why, and how, a significant demographic of our country connects with tfg.'s rhetoric. https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2024/09/13/eastern-kentucky-shame-trump
I read it and it reminds me of my cousin’s comment when I visited PA. “Nobody is helping me”, he said. Big employers moved to Mexico and other countries. The biggest business in the area moved out and got tax write offs worth millions. People lost their jobs and many lost their pensions, even their homes. They are hurting, they want action, they need help. Worst of all inflation is killing them especially at the supermarket. They feel the minorities are getting free stuff but not them. And they don’t even want free stuff. They want work at a decent pay. Trump may not actually do anything for them but at least he heard them and tells them what they want to hear. The racism in the MAGA world is a big attraction, it is like a glue that binds them together. No, you will never persuade them to vote for Harris. They are being had and they don’t care. Trump says things that they like. Nobody else does. So they gave up on voting blue and it is a national tragedy.
I will take a look, thank you.
Thank you Professor Richardson.
While your readers here have an excellent grasp of the significance of the Judicial branch of government, too many are intentionally abstracted. In spite of being informed of the significance of the Supreme Court vacancy during the 2016 cycle (as McConnell blocked Garland's nomination), swing state voters elevated the criminal Trump (by a thin margin) and that has led to the overturning of Roe v. Wade, overturning the Chevron decision, and eviscerating the concept of "and justice for all" with the deplorable immunity decision. While we discuss the importance of stopping the implementation of the Project 2025 plans to end the American experiment, the implementation has already begun with the ethically-challenged and extremist members of SCOTUS who are now in the majority.
As I wrote previously four Supreme Court justices will be 70 years of age or older when the next President is sworn in. Whether you are in a blue state or a swing state -we cannot accept the assured elevation of an incompetent like Aileen Cannon or an extremist like Matthew J. Kacsmaryk into an already bent and bias court.
Democracy is kept honest by checks and balances, seen as an impediment by those who would be kings. Power self-evidently tends to corrupt, so we divide power in what ideally would be equal shares with the vote. Again, there are bullies who hate that. The erosion of checks and balances is inherently anti-democratic, and as a naked abuse of entrusted power, corrupt. We have been fools to allow corruption to spread this far, but we still have a chance to stop it short of sepsis.
Yup. Repairing dysfunction of the legislative branch is key, in my opinion. Legislative is closest to the people and has ceded a lot of it power to executive in recent times. Danielle Allen’s recommendations for reform of Congress seem like an excellent starting point to me. The question is — how do we get a consensus on doing that when it means some ceding of power / influence by current members of Congress? I think that there could be a very popular argument made for bringing power more directly to the people (by increasing the number of reps and reducing the size of districts) — should be possible to get the people on board. What about the elites?
I am unsure of exactly how; the devil is always in the details, but somehow we need to make legislators more accountable to the public. And far less accountable to billionaires. I was just speaking by phone to my Canadian son-in-law who is himself contemplating a run for public office. He tells me that Canadian limits on campaign spending are far more strict that ours (a low bar indeed). Just as science and it's underlying method needs to be understood as a proven useful process for identifying accuracy rather than an oracle of settled truth, The Constitution remains a living thing in modern society to the degree is confidence-worthy recipe for justice. If interpretation of that recipe is resulting in empirically provable injustices, there is either something wrong with the recipe or those who are cooking with it.
We are ostensibly a a nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men (sic) are created equal; and despite hypocrisy, our better angels have demanded an expansion of that principle to be more universally extended. Not surprisingly, entrenched and exploitive interests are opposed, but they count for what?
We, as a human society, are constantly learning, via good faith contemplation, and our arts and sciences. Would it not be wise to periodically, if not constantly, explore and examine what justice worthy of the name, and worthy of acceptance as universal personal and societal rights really is? It's not a settled matter.
Do we..
Those retiring Justices will do everything in their power (and more) to ensure their replacements are not chosen by a Democrat.
Still want to know about Kennedy (SC Kennedy)
Me too, JD, me too.
And his son.
Exactly, still stinks but has been ignored
Canon 2: A Judge Should Avoid Impropriety and the Appearance of Impropriety in all Activities
https://www.uscourts.gov/judges-judgeships/code-conduct-united-states-judges#c
But rather, a plutocrat.
Thank you, Heather, for this. Most disturbing.
Fear….quite a motivator. And not a good one.
The republicans should be ashamed of their trashy disinformation.
Nothing shames them. They’re entitled after all.
The Right uses fear of bogus threats to gather voters, and the Left uses fear of LEGITIMATE threats for the same purpose.
we are capable of fear for a reason; but it's a evolutionarily primitive response, that is all to easily manipulated. Especially when insufficiently moderated by the evolutionarily later cerebral cortex.
My mentor who was captured at Corregidor and spent 3-1/2 years in POW and labor camps surprised me by his appreciation for the way we made peace with the Japanese after we fought them as hard as we needed to during the war. He understood how so many people could be motivated to fight for something they believed to be true but would change back to more civil cooperation when the leaders (or misleaders) were removed from the mix.
He didn't say it in the same words as Nietzsche but lived by the words “Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster... for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you.”
The connection to the more complete story about Wounded Knee shines a bright light that I imagine the authors of Project 1776 would never want revealed.
Jim Young Freeport, ME, thanks for reminding me of Netzsche's quote. I try to live by it. It's our challenge now, to not be sucked into their vortex, individually or collectively. We can't overcome the crazy, if we become crazy too.
And a nation half crazy and half relatively sane cannot endure.
But the fight needs to be real, not ignored or one-sided. David and Goliath was fantasy, was it not.
JD. Chilcutt, sure, participate in this fight, but try to avoid using violence in any and all forms. Otherwise, we will become what we fight against.
I am not sure that there was any realistic option for the US to avoid WWII, at least once Hitler got Blitzkrieg rolling. In Vietnam and Iraq, our behavior did not seem to be so clearly self-defense and our "Marshall Plan" for Iraq was costly boondoggles rather that aid the suffering public. As in police work, the use of force, even deadly force (such as in the sniper attack on Trump) may be a practical necessity, but as the last remaining practical response, not the first. Our aim as a society should be to prevent and deescalate violence, not to celebrate it.
The perpetual conundrum, repubs test it ad nauseam
I noticed the typo I made and added the "i" to make it "Nietzsche."
Thank you for this gem. My daughter was teaching in rural Japan and speaks pretty adequate Japanese. My wife and I spent about 25 days in the little town and touring where foreign tourists rarely reach. Our reception was overwhelmingly positive. The US defeated Japan, and the necessity for the use of atomic weapons remains controversial among historians I have read, as has been our slow withdrawal from Okinawa, but while we changed Japan, we did not enduringly subjugate it. We did, in fact, promote democracy, as we did in Europe with the strategically brilliant Marshall Plan.
The role of conquer is in the past (if not present) of many societies, including our own. It is the predominant bane of humanity and of civilization.
Don't knock fear. Fear has kept me voting Democrat for my whole life. Reagan=Hitler and Republican=Nazi has been the underpinning of my politics since I was old enough to think about it, and nothing has ever dissuaded me from that position. It just keeps getting reconfirmed day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year.
Most haven’t gotten that, since repubs are the flamethrowers of the insults (Nazi, socialism, commie, any derogatory slam). You are right, pass it on
At one point. Elon Musk was marketing actual flamethrowers. Weird.
As for insults:
"He called Harris a “Marxist communist fascist socialist,” clearly just stringing words together."
Beyond weird since they have that tendency
As I said, we have retained the capacity for fear for a reason, and our world is very dangerous as will as sustaining from the moment we are born. A bawling infant is crying for survival, and survival is wired into us. How could it not be? But the evolutionarily older parts of our brain, vetted though natural selection, are not the smartest, nor the most humane, and it takes a certain openness, discipline, empathy, and humility to avoid injustices, and to avoid becoming useful idiots for the predatory urges of tyrants.
"Accustomed to trample on the rights of those around you, you have lost the genius of your own independence, and become the fit subjects of the first cunning tyrant who rises." -Lincoln
BTW, It's said that "fools rush in where angels fear to tread. Courage marries fear to wisdom.
And also BTW, I believe that wisdom marries what is most likely to be true with what is most likely to matter. Science can help us order our priorities,but not make all of our decisions. Matters of the heart require good faith introspection and mindfulness. Nature sez, "You can do what you want to (to the planet) but, the next time you see me coming, you'd better run".
So Vance is willing to put his own constituents at risk of violence so he can ensure control of the senate, as dictated by McConnell. I don’t even have words for the republicans, traitors to the American people.
She was excoriated for her choice of words, but Hillary Clinton's"basket of deplorables" seems apt.
Hell , her “vast right wing conspiracy” accusation was on point, wasn’t it.
She was right as rain. Also when she alluded to a right-wing conspiracy early on.
It infuriates me that Vance is getting away with this complete dereliction of duty to his constituents in OHIO and, worse than that, actually putting some of those constituents in harm's way. Why isn't the media pressing him on this??? What is he doing to help the city of Springfield, OHIO or the residents of Springfield, OHIO who have been suffering decline for the entire length of his term of office? Ask the damn questions, please!!
Why does the Republicans’ convicted criminal candidate so lie and lie?
The majority of Americans have decency. They read good books, see worthy films, hear music well-rooted in the land and in great predecessor music. Most well value democracy, neighborliness with varieties of fellow citizens.
So what lets the Republican party’s criminal so rant, scorn the truth?
First, imagine a way of thinking that shuts out the varieties of the human and the natural, a way of thinking excluding truth’s nuances, complications, pains.
Imagine a world where there’s no conversation among us but, instead (as Yuval Noah Harari has been saying), only dictatorship, with crowds willing to let demagogues spew, insult, feed hatreds, raise alarms.
In that world, what remains of truth may sinks to but skeletal logic, so things repeat, following logic that is only linear, chronological, mechanical. Suitable to conveyor belts, treadmills, assembly lines.
Imagine, too, life abstracted only to the logic of groups, packages, categories.
What measures all this vulgarity, the linear and the grouped, as if complicated emotions and variations in human and natural truths can never enter?
What’s guilty? – the standardized testing which has so ruled U.S. schools as to cripple our tens of millions yet lined up for that orange criminal’s gushing lies.
How much lower can the Republicans go? The RNC gives us two immature candidates that act like uneducated, lazy 12-year olds. And the racial disinformation and threats of animal slaughter is supposed to scare us? Seriously folks, it’s embarrassing to witness what the Republican National Committee will waste our taxpayer taxes on.
I grew up in a part of Southern California, where a racist cult called the John Birch Society would stuff our school lockers with hate speech propaganda in order to provoke a race riot before every holiday. and sure enough the campus got divided, and we were let out of school a day early. We had bad neighborhoods where the gangster kids would jump you at Halloween and steal your candy. The difference now is the troublemakers have a megaphone to broadcast their garbage.
Be strong, stay civilized, and everyone should boycott the RNC, and keep voting Democrat Blue, up & down the ballot until the shameful behavior gets weeded out. Get involved and complain to the press for their sane-washing and bias reporting. We need our money to be used for much needed infrastructure, policies for a better economy, better schools, affordable healthcare, sustainable housing, climate crisis innovation, etc, etc, etc.
"keep voting Democrat Blue, up & down the ballot until the shameful behavior gets weeded out."
Agreed! Once we weed out the shameful behavior, maybe we might finally see some progress!
And shame the shameful behavior, the like of which, as in Heather's historical vignette, can result in the slaughter of innocents. Republicans have strayed so far out of bounds that they have no business whatsoever of being allowed in the game.
When I was 12, a year after having spent 4 years in Hawaii as a military dependent going to schools with a wonderful mix of kids from all over the world since soldiers married to so many women from different countries or ethnic/racial groups were often assigned there, we got an eye opener during Halloween in our first year in Missouri. The teenagers tried very hard to scare us younger kids with stories of Missouri's Bigfoot, "Momo"or "Mo Mo," though I forget the name they used in 1957.
We weren't scared by them, but some of them started beating the littler kids that weren't scared by the stories (not close enough around us, for us to see). I guess my brother and I and our friends were too big and unafraid for them to attack us but it always disgusted me when the fear mongers turn violent when people don't believe their lies.
It’s always their “go to.” Just like the mob…
Thank you Kathaleen. You are so right. The only thing I would disagree with is that they aren't acting like 12 year olds, more like 5 year olds that have tantrums when they don't get their way...no offense to 5 or 12 year olds!
Tantrums are a developmental response when you are very young and relatively unskilled and powerless. Extreme similar behavior (I say extreme for who of us has never emotionally regressed?) can become destructive and even deadly, empowered by adult status in an adult body. How much of humanity's preventable suffering can be attributed to that?
They do seem to start becoming dangerous and destructive in their teens, though.
The RNC’s latest wasted effort is that RFK Jr wants all the printed ballots with desperate Bobby listed as a separate candidate to be thrown out, and fix the Trump candidate section, then reprint
the ballots, which jeopardizes the out of state, Military ballots that mail from out of the country to be late, etc. They could of just done a disclaimer, but no, lawyers were paid to redo the ballots. RNC doesn’t care how much money they waste.
But that is exactly what they are doing in North Carolina. The ballots were already printed and their state "Supreme Court" ruled that they had to be reprinted...voter suppression for sure and taxpayers pay for the cost!
Planned, ostensibly legal obstruction at taxpayers expense.
Great.
It is certainly hard to believe that a Democrat who fully missed a hard deadline would be extended so extreme a "courtesy".
The idea that you can capture the full potential of a human being in a few numbers is unrealistic and inhumane. Insofar as the outcomes of degrees are ruled by numbers rather than accomplishments, that system is self-fulfilling and circular; and that may have a lot to do with why so many, even so many "well educated" people revere Trump. Too much circular thinking.
But underneath it all I see the sociopathic "love of money"; and of power, of which money in a species.
Hey, Phil, it's nothing a Blue Wave election can't change.
A Blue Wave is a necessity, and also, we are ostensibly electing representatives, not super-heroes, so We the People need to be clear about what they are meant to represent and be held accountable for.
A crap shoot
Jim, the Democrats don't go low for the most part. But, since I'm an Independent and former Republican I enjoy the Lincoln Project ads where they goad Trump.
Here are two rumors (conspiracy theories I heard while driving cross-country the past couple of days.
1) This according to Matt Drudge who I don't read or support) - "Trump is having an affair with conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer." That's just what we need, an invisible First Lady and Trump's mistress living in the WH.
2) The reason the family Trump doesn't have any pets is because the immigrant Melania keeps having them served for dinner. And remember she brought her father and mother over from Europe to assist with Barron during Trump's administration.
The standardized testing? A weak response.
When you factor in teaching to the test and making sure that the test outcomes reflect the "education" being delivered, and the complete absence of teaching critical thinking or analysis of information, yes. That standardized testing, as in "No Child Left Behind" which has given us a generation of people who, by and large, cannot think critically.
As you probably know, Professor, fans of Drive By Truckers refer to certain clever (dare I say brilliant?) turns of phrase by songwriter Mike Cooley as "Cooleyisms." I'm gonna call the last paragraph of today's letter a "Heatherism," a brilliant synthesis of complex ideas in a single, telling, straight to the heart and gut reference and analogy. Well done.
I am routinely surprised that, despite my past study of American history, the letters from the Professor leave me with an improved understanding of what has gone before while putting today into context. Today’s letter is yet another example.
I’ve been trying to understand how the Haitian immigrant story got its start. Finally, here is a straight forward reveal of the roots of the insidious lies told to get here. It’s astounding. The tie in to Wounded Knee was outlined brilliantly. Thanks Professor Richardson. Your value to those of us willing to read with an open mind is difficult to quantify, but it is significant.
I recall how some teachers/professors could kill the joy even in subjects that were my passion, while other could bring even what I would otherwise overlook to life. The latter virtually breathed life into instruction by showing the connection and/or resonance with our own lives and circumstances. Heather has that talent.
Yes! Me too. This was another brilliant and illuminating letter.
Jeff Beenfeld, while every other well-written well-considered response picks up important aspects of these horrible situations, you alone hit what I consider to be the proverbial “nail on the head”: HCR’s historical citation of Wounded Knee. This would never have occurred to me. But now that she has cited it, one must respect the observation (and HCR’s undoubted conviction) that history tends to repeat itself. Wounded Knee saw indigenous Americans physically-sacrificed for partisan political gain. Will legally-landed Haitians be sacrificed (and many of the privileged rest of us in myriad lesser ways) for partisan political purposes? Is there anything we can do to prevent this? VOTE YOUR CONSCIENCE. IF YOU BELIEVE SMALL DONATIONS CAN CHANGE VOTES, MAKE THEM.
And the ending looped back to the beginning like a good Garrison Keillor story.
YEs, Craig & Mark, HCR weaves a brilliant tapestry of history, one I fear is all too true and close to current experience. Whether or not people are actually killed in Springfield as a result of MAGAt lies, and I certainly hope it doesn’t reach that point, the MAGAts have ALREADY created the impression of ciivil disruption and unrest there with the bomb threats and resulting school closures “because of the (legal) Haitian immigrants," disruption and unrest created entirely by their own lies!
Fascinating how the Wounded Knee massacre had its origin in party politics in Washington.
I guess my remaining - necessarily modest --campaign donations will go to reelect Democrats in Ohio and Montana, and to get rid of Ted Cruz and flip Texas BLUE!
Planning to do both
Tossing Gallegos in Arizona into that mix as well.
Such a tragic history of our nation regarding race, the displacement of native Americans and desecration of their land.
As the Wounded Knee Massacre started in Washington D.C., so did all the Indian Wars through the belief in manifest destiny.
And it's still those same kind of racist, loud-mouthed, white pride maniacs(the actual 'savages') through the ages stirring up hatred, promoting and participating in violence of immigrants, freed slaves, refugees, LGBTQ, whomever they hate ad infinitum.
Going on and on about the Haitian immigrants with these unfounded fabrications and their hateful diatribes is yet another disturbing and disqualifying act that Trump and Vance are guilty of.
As Voltaire said "Those that can make you believe an absurdity, can make you commit an atrocity..."
Feels like the lie about the Sandy Hook shooting all over again. It cost Alex Jones in the neighborhood of a billion dollars. Let's hope this one gets nipped in the bud right now. As in this week!
Haitians, in particular, are bad targets. They are very hard-working. I was in New York for several years in the ‘80s. When I got there, there were a lot of Haitian cabdrivers. When I left after 3 years, there were a lot fewer. They had saved their money and moved up to “black cars” ( so-called for the color of the vehicle, not the driver), sedans you could call for pick-up. My mother was in a nursing home for over a decade; most of the women who took care of her were Haitian. The guy who delivers our paper is Haitian. He works seven days a week and has another job, maybe two. Springfield is lucky to have those Haitians.
The Wounded Knee massacre started in Washington? Wow. What would I do without Heather Cox Richardson and Rachel Maddow providing the true and untold stories of our country in the appropriate historical context. So much respect and gratitude to these two brilliant women.
Well then. Not only do we have Leonard Leo to "thank" for purchasing Justice Thomas, the tie-breaking vote that gave us Citizens United, we also have Mitch McConnell, Doctor of Obstruction, who took advantage of weaknesses in the US Constitution, not only to give us Trump and his 3 Justices, but to prevent the American People from accomplish anything productive.
Thanks, guys.
As I said previously, there’s a special place in hell reserved for those two.
This is a bit off topic, but Democrats need to keep an eye on the election in Maryland if they hope to retain control of the Senate. Polls show Democrat County Executive Angela Alsobrooks beating former Republican Governor Larry Hogan, but I just don’t believe them. Maryland is a blue state, but Hogan was a popular Governor and much of Maryland is, in fact, quite conservative. Alsobrooks will have to dominate the vote in the more populated counties near Washington, DC in order to win. She might, but Hogan scored well in those areas in his last run for statewide office and Alsobrooks and organizations supporting her are basing her entire campaign on abortion rights. She has no ads up talking about inflation, housing, education, transportation or other “bread and butter” issues. If she doesn’t start talking to Maryland voters about how she will improve their lives, she will lose this race.
Lord, whack-a-mole.
Here is some more worrying evidence from a Maryland Matters, a local online news source.
Progressive Maryland, a left-leaning group, has budgeted about $500,000 for the effort to defeat former Gov. Larry Hogan (R) and expects its volunteers and field organizers to hit between 100,000 and 200,000 voters’ doors before Election Day.
Progressive Maryland troops have been surprised to encounter voters on their target list who view Hogan favorably, or are reluctant to support Alsobrooks, or seem disinclined to vote at all. “We’re trying to persuade people more than we want,” Larry Stafford, Progressive Maryland’s executive director. said.
Stafford said he frets that Democratic leaders and donors, especially at the national level, are taking the Maryland Senate election for granted, and are assuming the state’s 2-1 advantage in Democratic voter enrollment will carry Alsobrooks to victory.
Stafford’s fears appear to be confirmed by remarks U.S. Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, gave reporters on Tuesday. Peters said his top priority this November is defending incumbents in tough races — placing Montana’s Jon Tester and Ohio’s Sherrod Brown at the top of the list for resources.
I’ll add Maryland, for the good my contribution will make.
Thanks! I’m hoping my worries are misplaced, but I have lived through Kathleen Kennedy Townsend’s and Anthony Brown’s disastrously run, unsuccessful gubernatorial campaigns. She lost to Bob Ehrlich, He lost to Hogan. Alsobrooks is not well known outside of Prince George’s and Montgomery Counties. She needs to REALLY run up the score in PG, Baltimore County, Baltimore City, Howard County and Montgomery County. She needs to do fairly well in Frederick County. She appears to be doing absolutely nothing to cut into Hogan’s lead in the rest of the mostly rural, conservative state—the Eastern Shore, Southern Maryland, and the Western counties. I see Hogan AND Trump signs everywhere in those areas AND in the traditionally Democratic strongholds. Here’s is a risky strategy. We’ve seen this movie.
The rural people have really been targeted and lied too with a vengeance. Sadly, it has worked to a great extent.
Unless Democrats regain control of both the Senate and the House, America will just be stuck in a continuous downward spiral. Without upgrading public education to include critical thinking skills, history, the arts, science, reading, etc., Yuval Noah Harari’s horrific predictions of dictatorship, with brainwashed crowds willing to let demagogues spew, insult, feed hatreds, raise false alarms, may become the bleak future. We have to help Democrats win by a huge majority in November.
Your ability to tie history to today is so brilliant, Dr. we feel so fortunate to have discovered you and as depressing as today’s events are, sometimes worse than their historical precedents, you make our day. Thank you especially for this letter. I hope the people of Ohio wake up to how they’re being manipulated.